From The Hollywood Reporter via Yahoo! -
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ARE THERE ACTORS WHOSE POLITICAL OPINIONS DISTURB YOU SO MUCH YOU WON'T SEE THEIR MOVIES?
O'Reilly: Just Sean Penn
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: SOMEONE WILL READ THAT AND ACCUSE YOU OF ENCOURAGING A NEW BLACKLIST ERA.
O'Reilly: Not at all. He's a great actor, and if you hire him, you'll get a good performance. I'm just not going to give a guy who gives aid and comfort to people like (Iran president Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein, when he was alive, my 10 bucks. That's my right as an American.
This is pretty petty, even for O'Reilly. Even as liberal as I am, I've never not watched a Charlton Heston movie because he was the president of the NRA or not watched a Law and Order rerun because Fred Thompson is in it. More importantly, I don't know anyone who has.
Yes, Sean Penn is annoyingly smug, but he's also undeniably talented. As with Bono of U2 (somebody who is also annoyingly smug), I'm a fan because of what they can do on screen or in the studio, not because of their politics.
(Full disclosure - I didn't go out of my way to watch Heston's films, but mostly because he had done almost nothing noteworthy after The Planet Of The Apes. And most of Thompson's work was as a secondary character. As such, his performances wouldn't have had an impact on my "see/don't see" decision anyway.)
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