Stage, TV and film actress Eileen Ryan took a break from her career to raise her sons, actors Sean and Chris Penn and musician Michael Penn, and then sometimes sons and husband Leo Director Penn died Sunday at his home in Malibu, California, at the age of 94.
Her family announced her death through a publicist.
Ryan, who is in his late 20s, met Penn in 1956 while performing at “Iceman Comes” at the Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village. they got married soon after.
Her career was going well at that point. She had already made her Broadway debut in 1953 with ‘Sing Till Tomorrow’ and in 1958 she returned to Broadway with ‘Comes a Day’. But she took pride in making her own decisions — “I don’t think anyone has felt more in control of their own destiny than I have,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. was — and quickly made the difficult decision to scale back her performance.
The choices began to become clear, she said, when she had to move away from home for work and leave Michael, who was a baby at the time, with Leo.
“I was out of town and all I did was cry,” she told The Times. “So it became very clear that I wanted to be home with my kids.”
The family moved to the West Coast and she still performed occasionally during the 1960s and 70s.She appeared in an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” “Bonanza” and some of the other shows were directed by Leo Penn, who was blacklisted in the 1940s and ’50s but became a prolific television director.
But in 1986, her most significant performance for a long time was a supporting role in a home movie made by a young Sean Penn and his neighbor Emilio Estevez, son of actor Martin Sheen. served.
“I was the mother in the background screaming from the kitchen,” she said.
Ryan returned to acting more regularly with a role in the 1986 film At Close Range. In this crime drama, she played the grandmother of the characters played by her sons Sean and Chris. Two years later, she played the mother of Sean Penn’s character in the film Judgment in Berlin. This was a Leo Penn-directed drama whose stars also included Mr. Sheen.
Ryan and her husband starred in Irish playwright Graham Reed’s drama Remembrance at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles in 1997, with Sean Penn returning to the stage as producer.
Leo Penn passed away in 1998. Ms. Ryan continued acting and amassed over 20 additional TV and film credits. Most recently, he starred in his 2016 film Rules Don’t Apply, directed by Warren Beatty.
Eileen Rose Annucci was born in the Bronx on October 16, 1927. Her father, William, was a lawyer and dentist. Her mother, Rose (Ryan) Anucci, was the source of her last name, which Eileen later adopted into her acting career.
That career, or at least the aspiration for it, started early. As a child growing up in New York, she used to put on plays in the courtyard of her apartment complex.
“I remember beating up all the little boys in my apartment so they could be in my play,” she said.
After graduating from New York University with a bachelor’s degree, she launched her acting career and started down the path of meeting Mr. Penn.
Resuming her career in the 1980s, her first credit was with Ron Howard’s comic book drama. “Parent-child relationship” (1989). She played one half of an elderly couple. The male half is played by Mr. Robards, who left “The Iceman” decades ago and was able to meet Mr. Penn.
Ryan’s son Chris died in 2006. In addition to her other sons, she has her three grandchildren.