If you live in San Francisco, you're more or less guaranteed to run in to Sean Penn at least once during your tenure. It's a rite of passage like drinking your first Fernet or spotting your first wild parrot. Unfortunately for Cuban actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who starred across from Penn in 1988's Colors, was less like a fun celebrity sighting and more like a public cursing match.
According to a report from the New York Post's always-scurrilous Page Six, Alonso ran in to Penn while picking up her mother (awww) at a lost luggage area at LAX. Alonso, who grew up in Venezuela, has decried Penn's public support of President Hugo Chavez in the past, so naturally an airport meeting would make a fine place to have a political debate. When Penn, who had just flown in from Haiti, declined to indulge her in a bit of debate, Alonso lashed out. (Humorous censorship, theirs):
I went back to my mother, and he started yelling at us,” Alonso told us. “I yelled back, ‘Communist [bleep]hole!’ Nearly 60 people were watching, shocked. My mother wanted to clap, but she couldn’t because she was in a wheelchair and she had a small dog in her lap.
Penn, meanwhile, claims he didn't recognize the actress he once shared a love scene with, even though he did recall she had been "saying a lot of things about [him] in the press. Alonso later apologized for calling Mr. Wright-Penn an asshole, but explained she did not regret calling him a communist.
Previously: Sean Penn Helped Free UC Hikers By Visiting Hugo Chavez
Here's a Look at Sean Penn's New Goth Movie. Also: What's Your Sean Penn Story?
[NYPost]