Sean Penn calls being a celebrity a "disease"

Despite his fame and fortune, Sean Penn openly states that turning ones back on stardom is nothing less than “common sense”.

Penn, who stars in This Must Be the Place, feels he can relate to his character Cheyenne, a "mascara wearing rock star" who goes into exile in order to avoid the limelight. Cheyenne then travels the world in order to pursue a Nazi who brutalized his father. Penn attacks stardom calling it, “an obscene disease of celebrity."

He adds, with the Washington Post,“I think that it's diminished the quality of life. Not particularly for the people who are the focus of it, though that is clearly something that I've been compromised by. But for the culture at large, there is this kind of herd commitment... I think it's just become cheap."

Penn brought these ideas to light at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which was held in Utah. His new film hits theaters in March.