Sean Penn Profile

Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American film actor and director, also known for his political activsm. He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River and Milk, as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.

Penn was supposedly engaged to actress Elizabeth McGovern, his co-star in 1984's Racing with the Moon, after which he dated Susan Sarandon. Penn's personal life began to attract media attention when he married pop star Madonna in 1985. The relationship was marred by violent outbursts against the press, including one incident for which he was arrested for assaulting a photographer on a film set; Penn was sentenced to 60 days in jail in mid-1987, of which he served 33 days. It is also alleged that when Penn discovered the paparazzo in his hotel room, he hung him by his ankles from the ninth-floor balcony. Madonna dedicated her third studio album, True Blue to Penn, referring to him in the liner notes as "the coolest guy in the universe". Later in the marriage, Penn was charged with felony domestic assault, a charge for which he pleaded to a misdemeanor. Penn and Madonna divorced in 1989.

He soon began a relationship with Robin Wright, and their first child, a daughter named Dylan Frances, was born in 1991. Their second child, a son named Hopper Jack, was born in 1993. Penn and Wright married in 1996 and lived in Ross, California. The relationship has gone through on-and-off again periods in recent years. Divorce plans and separation have been announced, beginning in December 2007, and again in April 2009, only to be withdrawn, most recently in May 2009. On August 12, 2009, Robin Wright Penn filed for divorce, declaring she has no plans to reconcile.

During a separation from Wright in the mid 1990s, Penn dated singer and songwriter Jewel. He was also the director of the original video for Jewel's hit song "You Were Meant for me"

Recently, Penn has been linked with model Jessica White.

Penn's younger brother, Chris, died from an enlarged heart in his Santa Monica condominium on January 24, 2006.

Along with Johnny Deep, Mick Hucknall, and John Malkovich, Penn was a part-owner of the Parisian restaurant-bar Man Ray.

Kurt Cobain Profile

Kurt Cobain was the lead singer and guitarist for the band Nirvana, whose melodic rock songs bridged punk with pop and sold millions of records in the early 1990s. The stripped-down, amped-up anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" made it to the top of the charts in 1991 and helped "grunge" rock unseat Michael Jackson-style pop. (It also helped put Seattle on the musical map -- Cobain was from the sort-of nearby logging town of Aberdeen, Washington.) The band's albums included Bleach (1989), Nevermind (1991) and In Utero

(1993). Nirvana was briefly the hottest band in the world, but Cobain's discomfort with fame, personal demons and battles with drugs quickly caused problems. His status as rock legend was cemented when he committed suicide in 1994, apparently by shooting himself in the mouth with a shotgun.

Extra credit: Cobain married rocker/actress Coutney Love in 1992... The couple had one daughter, Frances Bean, born in 1992... Some fans continue to believe that Cobain was murdered. Though a suicide note was found near Cobain's body, and though the coroner ruled that Cobain's wounds were self-inflicted, these fans feel the suicide was staged, and some also accuse Courtney Love of being involved. This theory has been widely publicized but has never been proved... A 1998 documentary film, Kurt and Courtney, examined their relationship and Cobain's death.

Other rock legends who died young include Tupac Shakur Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin.