Robin Gayle Wright Penn (born April 8, 1966) is an American film actress.
Penn was born Robin Gayle Wright in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Gayle (née Gaston), an Independent Executive National Sales Director for Mary Kay cosmetics, and Fred Wright, a pharmaceutical executive. She was raised in San Diego, California.
She was listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1986" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 38. . Wright first became famous on television, playing Kelly Capwell on the soap opera Santa Barbara, which earned her 3 Daytime Emmy nominations. She shot to stardom after her roles as Buttercup in The Princess Bride and Jenny Curran in Forrest Gump, the latter role garnering her Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Supporting Actress (but not an Academy Award nomination that many believe she deserved). Wright was offered the role of Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but turned it down because she was pregnant. She had to back out of the role of Abby McDeere in The Firm (1993), with Tom Cruise, upon discovering that she was pregnant with her second child (son Hopper Penn). The role eventually went to Jeanne Tripplehorn.
In 1996, she married Sean Penn and changed her name to Robin Wright Penn. She went on to co-star with her husband in the 1997 film She's So Lovely, for which she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. Penn has continued to give amazing performances on TV and in films. One of her most recent successes was a supporting role in the TV movie Empire Falls as Grace Roby, mother of Ed Harris's character Miles Roby. Penn received her third Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for this role.
Wright became involved with actor Sean Penn in about 1989 following his divorce from Madonna, marrying on 27 April 1996. Their daughter Dylan Frances Penn was born on 13 April 1991, and son Hopper Jack Penn was born on 6 August 1993. Currently they live in Ross, California. On December 27, 2007, the couple's representative announced that the Penns are divorcing, however, on April 09, 2008, it was announced that the couple had filed a petition to dismiss the divorce. Wright-Penn was previously married to actor Dane Witherspoon from 1986 to 1988. She is the national campaign spokesperson for the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America.
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