Strange Facts About Sean Penn's Kids

Hopper Jack Penn and Dylan Frances Penn are the son and daughter, respectively, of Sean Penn and Robin Wright. Raised outside of Hollywood for most of their lives, the son and daughter doppelgangers of their famous parents eventually found their way to the Hollywood scene. And even though they didn't grow up cruising up and down the Sunset Strip, the Penn kids did not have a typical upbringing. Here are some strange facts about Hopper and Dylan Penn.

Apparently the apple didn't fall too far from the tree in Hopper's case, because it didn't take him long to follow right in his dad's footsteps in terms of having a volatile relationship with the paparazzi. The elder Penn famously settled a civil suit brought against him after he "kicked, punched and threatened" a photographer in 2009, according to The New York Post.

Four years later, Hopper, who was 19 at the time, got into an altercation with a Splash News photographer outside an office building in Beverly Hills, according to TMZ. In the incident that was all caught on video, the younger Penn bumps into the photographer, then proceeds to say, ""F*** you ... you're a f***ing f***ot ... shut up you f***ing n***er," while walking away. Luckily for Hopper, the photographer declined to press charges, probably because he knew his camera just got loaded with video gold anyway.

Hopper later apologized in a statement to TMZ, which read, "I was accosted by paparazzi and made to feel like an animal — threatened and under attack, but that does not condone my own actions. I deeply regret my choice of words." While that's clearly not even close to what happened in the video, he did own up to the vile language, so that's something.

After his parents' divorce, Hopper moved to LA with his mom, where he admittedly "fell in with a bad crowd," according to an interview with Evening Standard. "I was doing a lot of stuff but meth was the main one that brought me down. I went to rehab because I woke up in hospital and my dad said, 'Rehab? Or bus bench?' I was like, 'I'll take the bed.'" The tough love maneuver had to be hard for Penn, who once told Cinema.com that "being a parent has made everything better."

But Hopper can appreciate his dad's hardline approach in retrospect. "Thank God I got out of that because that was the worst time in my life. Because it's not fun when it gets to a point where you just need it," he said. His dad even helped him get his foot in the door afterwards, casting him in a movie he was directing, called The Last Face. "I know he kind of wrote the part for me. He really wanted to work with me and it ended up being great. But yeah, maybe it was about giving me just a little structure," Hopper said.

Again, Sean had to drive home the practicality of his son's options to get him to make the right choice. According to Interview, Hopper asked his dad if he could be a PA [production assistant] on the film, and his dad said, "No, you're going to act in it." Hopper said he didn't want to because he was shy, and Sean said, "Well, you'll get paid." That got him "onboard," and he's been pursuing an acting career ever since. So he went from meth addict to Hollywood up-and-comer in a few short years. We guess anything's possible in this world. (When your parents are Jeff Spicoli and Claire Underwood, anyway.)

Though he's appearing soon alongside Brad Pitt in Netflix's War Machine, and was just recently at the time of this writing named "the face of Fendi's SS17 eyewear collection," Hopper still considers his primary job to be a pizza chef at his godfather's restaurant, Lamonica's NY-Pizza in LA. "It is the best pizza I've ever had," he tells Evening Standard.

Though it's obvious to everyone but Hopper that he's clearly moved on from the dough-flipping gig. "They got really annoyed with me working and then being like, 'I've gotta go away for a week.' And working, and going off. So then they said: 'Just come in when you can and help out,'" Hopper said.

So in reality, that's the exact opposite of a job. And if you think that's an unfair assessment of rich kid who's at least pretending like he has to work in food service, go ahead and tell your boss you need off for a week because Brad Pitt needs you on the set, and see if you can even get the sentence out before you're fired.

Though she never found herself getting carted off to rehab, Hopper's older sister, Dylan, experienced the same kind of brass tacks parenting as he did. After she moved to NYC to try her hand at the advertising business, she moved back to LA and enrolled at UCLA to pursue screenwriting. But that didn't stick either, due to her "frustration with the school's core curriculum," according to The Daily Beast. Well, that wasn't going to fly for her hardliner parents, who allegedly snipped the purse strings after she ditched school. So, what did she do? She went to work in that pizza shop, of course.

"I did that for about seven months," she said. "I dropped out of USC after a semester, and my parents told me I was financially cut off. So my godfather owns a pizza place in Westwood by UCLA, and offered me a job. And I delivered pizzas." Surprisingly, delivering food to drunk college kids wasn't exactly a dream job. "After I was asked if I was a stripper, like, three times, I was like, 'I'm done,'" she told The New York Post.

Perhaps the strangest item on this list is Hopper's claim that Sean wanted to name him "Steak." Yes, as in T-Bone, Porterhouse, Ribeye — We're talking about the cut of meat here. "My dad wanted to name me Steak, the food, because he loves it so much," Hopper told Interview. "But my mom was never going to go for it. What they told me is that I hopped in her stomach, I didn't kick, so they went with that," he continued.

And since that makes no sense either, let's find out if Sean Penn has any insight. When asked by New York magazine about whether Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson were influences on his son's handle, Penn said, "They were, and they weren't. Basically, these were names that we'd liked, aesthetically. But, yeah, when I first saw Easy Rider, it certainly set my mind free about what movies can be. Jack has always been a shot in the arm to everybody who acts." Cool, so we've gotten this nailed down to "We liked how it sounded."

At 16 years old, Hopper, a lifelong skateboarder, got into a serious accident that required emergency surgery. "I had internal bleeding, and there was blood leaking into my skull because there was a fracture. I had swelling in my brain, and they were like, 'You've got two hours.' They said I'd either die or be in a coma if they didn't put me into brain surgery," he told Evening Standard. He also pointed out a scar on his nose left by the accident.

Sean recalled the terrifying event in an interview with Esquire. "It had already been eight months of divorce and s**t, and raising a kid that's going through the divorce himself, and then this f*****g thing happens. He's 100 percent now, no brain damage — he's great. Got a few scars, but he's great. But it was a tough, tough time."

Hopper was even spotted back on his board, not wearing a helmet, and pulling street tricks in 2016.

After her brief foray into the non-glamorous world of pizza delivery, Dylan finally gave in to the career nature had already decided for her: modeling. The spitting image of her gorgeous mother, Dylan took to modeling like a pro, although like seemingly everything else she's tried in her life, she's not that into it. "Modeling is not a passion of mine. I have been having fun with it, but it's just to pay the bills. Writing, directing...anything behind the camera is what I want to do," she told Elle.

She also told Fox 411, "I'm rarely comfortable during a shoot. There are times when I have a good time and I feel really comfortable with the photographer and the crew. But most times, it's awkward, and I don't really like having my picture taken anyway and modeling is kind of painful at times but it's what pays the bills and I'm very lucky to get the jobs I have been fortunate enough to have." It was an odd statement, considering she'd posed practically naked for Treats! (via Page Six) the year before, which already had everyone scratching their heads, since Dylan had previously rejected Playboy's $100,000 offer to appear on the cover.

But Dylan also revealed to The Daily Beast that she felt duped by the Treats! shoot when she was confronted about the racy spread on a movie set. "I remember this very clearly because the producer came up to me the day that it came out, and I was really unaware that that photo was going to be used," she said. "I was actually told that I would have control over what would be published, and I wasn't informed. So I was shocked and... never again will I do that. Lesson learned," she continued.

Note to self: Do not believe nude fashion photographer when they say they won't use nude fashion photos they just took of you.