Sean Penn recently opened up about the domestic violence claims that have consistently followed his divorce from Madonna.
The two-time Academy Award winner addressed the rumor accusing him of hitting the pop star with a baseball bat during their rocky four-year marriage in the late 1980s.
He revealed in a weekend interview that a woman he was dating confronted him about it after they spent “a lovely evening” together.
“She’s looking at me like I killed her dog,” the “Daddio” star told Maureen Dowd for a New York Times profile timed with his latest film. “I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.”
“Now I think it’s fair to say that I’m not the biggest guy in the world. But if I hit Mike Tyson in the head with a baseball bat, he’s going to the hospital,” he added.
Penn, 63, recalled the time in 1988 when Madonna filed an assault complaint against him and authorities swarmed their Malibu home. He admitted to ignoring orders to come outside with his hands up.
“I had a freaking SWAT team come into my house,” he shared. “I said: ‘I’m not coming out. I’m going to finish my breakfast.’ The next thing I knew, windows were being broken all around the house and they came in. They had me in handcuffs.”
While Madonna reportedly withdrew her complaint a week later, scuttlebutt about the abuse — including a wild tabloid report about him tying Madonna up and leaving her for nine hours — stained their relationship.
Decades later, Penn’s alleged actions took on a new life when Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels compared them to “Empire” star Terrence Howard’s own admission of hitting his two ex-wives.
“That poor boy. [Terrence] ain’t done nothing different than Marlon Brando or Sean Penn, and all of a sudden he’s some f—in’ demon,” Daniels said in a 2015 “Hollywood Reporter” interview. “That’s a sign of the time, of race, of where we are right now in America.”
Penn sued Daniels for a whopping $10 million in a defamation suit, and Madonna provided an affidavit in support of her ex.
“While we certainly had more than one heated argument during our marriage, Sean has never struck me, ‘tied me up,’ or physically assaulted me, and any report to the contrary is completely outrageous, malicious, reckless and false,” she said in her statement at the time.
According to Penn, Daniels had to issue an apology and contribute to his nonprofit charity efforts as part of a 2016 settlement.
As far as his current relationship with Madonna, Penn referred to her as “someone I love” and said their friendship was quick to repair after their divorce because no children were involved.