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Hopper Penn: Sean Penn’s Son Almost Had A Rare Name

By Victoria Miller
Published on: 09:06 PST, Jun 15, 2016

Hopper Penn dodged a big bullet in the name department. The 22-year-old firstborn son of actors Sean Penn and Robin Weight recently told Interview magazine that his famous dad wanted to name him after a cut of meat, but his sensible mom stepped in to stop the madness.

“My dad wanted to name me Steak, the food, because he loves it so much,” Hopper said. “But my mom was never going to go for it.”

Hopper Penn still ended up with a unique moniker, but instead of being named after a dinner entrée, his name is a combination of a loving tribute to one of his dad’s favorite actors, as well as his behavior in utero.

“It has to do with Dennis Hopper; my dad was friendly with him and idolized him,” Hopper told the magazine of his first name. “What they told me is that I hopped in her stomach, I didn’t kick, so they went with that.”

As for Hopper Penn’s middle name—Jack—that comes courtesy of acting legend and family friend, Jack Nicholson. Sean previously told New York magazine that the combination of names just worked (“These were names that we’d liked, aesthetically,” the actor said), and it didn’t hurt that both Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson starred in one of his favorite films, Easy Rider, together.

Still, even though he’s the child of two Hollywood A-listers and he ended up with a pretty cool name, life hasn’t always been easy for Hopper Penn. The son of Sean Penn and Robin Wright nearly died after a skateboarding accident as a teen. Hopper, who moved in with his father following his parents’ divorce in 2010, sustained a life-threatening head injury in a serious skating accident and he underwent emergency brain surgery.

“He underwent risky surgery due to intense bleeding of the brain,” Sean Penn told Vanity Fair at the time. Hopper’s brush with death was life-changing for Sean, who later decided he should repay the karmic gift he was given and give back to the world via his J/P Haitian Relief Organization.

Like his mom and dad, Hopper Penn has been bitten by the acting bug, but he admits he still has a lot to learn. After he recovered from his skateboarding accident, Hopper made his acting debut in the 2011 short film, Back in the Game, and most recently his famous dad cast him in The Last Face. Hopper Penn is also set to appear in the Netflix political satire, War Machine, with Brad Pitt.

“My dad is a really good actor, and there are a lot of sh***y actors, and I definitely think I’m one of them,” Hopper Penn told Interview. “I’m very shy; I didn’t know how to act. [My dad] said, ‘Well, you’ll get paid.’ So I was like, ‘I’m on board.’ After the first day, I fell in love with it.”

As for what type of acting he hopes to do in the future, Hopper said being on “stage” would be his dream—just not the Broadway, singing kind of stage.

“I’d like to do comedies,” Hopper said. “I don’t know how to get to where I am as weird as I actually am in front of the camera.”

Earlier this year, Hopper Penn and his sister Dylan, 24, teamed up for fashion campaign for Fay’s Spring/Summer 2016 collection, posing for the line in a desert-themed photo shoot. Now it seems that the Penn siblings are following in their famous parents’ footsteps—so be sure to remember their names.

Take a look at the video below for more on Hopper Penn.

[Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]

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