THE Gossip Girl a former student detailed his experience as a child actor with what he described as “body dysmorphia.”
“I know I hated my body,” Penn said The Guardian in April 2025, “and I just wanted a different one.”
In response to the weight he gained following his parents’ divorce, he added: “There was a period where, coming out of depression and isolation, I was jumping willingly, but I was also immersed in this world where the more conventionally beautiful I seemed, the more successful I could be, the more valuable I was.”
Despite mental difficulties, Penn attributed his ability to persist to his spirituality.
“That’s what allowed me to persevere through the disillusionment, all the things that I had been struggling with,” he explained, “and then come back to it, but with, I hope, some sort of inner transformation.”
