Jewel Reveals She Dated & Fell in Love With Sean Penn During His Split From Robin Wright

"Sean took me to see the sights in Montartre and wrote me in notes that he hid in my pockets," she reveals. "...I enjoyed Sean and would eventually fall in love"

By Bruna Nessif Sep 23, 2015 10:31 PMTags
Sean Penn, JewelEthan Miller/Getty Images, Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

Who will save your soul? Well, in the '90s, the answer for Jewel was none other than Sean Penn.

The songstress' memoir Jewel—Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, available now, is proving to be quite the juicy tale. An excerpt from the book reveals that the "Foolish Games" singer had a romance with the actor when she first came onto the scene.

She recalled how it all began, when her music career was in its beginning stages, and Penn split from now-ex-wife Robin Wright.

"Around this time, in 1995, I got my first TV break," she writes of her television debut on Conan O'Brien's show. "I think I was wearing purple polyester pants with a black T-shirt and a tacky belt with a rainbow buckle that I loved. The performance was a huge break for me."

Huge, indeed! It warranted a phone call from Penn, who saw Jewel on the show and wanted her to compose a song for his film The Crossing Guard.

Blue Rider Press

"I told him I would and he said he would meet me anywhere to screen the movie, I could name the day. I gave him my cell number and figured I would never hear from him again," she wrote.

She definitely heard from him again...and some. Jewel ended up writing a song called "Emily" for Penn's 1995 flick, and then their romance began. "We spoke on the phone a lot and he was a fantastic flirt and I did not mind one bit," she shared.

"But I was no fool and knew I was most likely a trifle to him. I intended to give him no such conquest. I put that man through his paces and he took it in stride. He began to court me in earnest, following me around on tour, acting as my de facto roadie."

AP Photo/Chris Pizzello

Jewel continued, "I moved very slowly with him but he was a persistent and inventive suitor, and I enjoyed it immensely. I kept our burgeoning relationship very quiet."

She also asked him to be completely sober. "I liked his mind sober, and had fun playing this way. When I told him this in all seriousness, in a dive bar after a sound check, he responded with a melancholy stare and then canary-eating grin and said it would be impossible not to fall in love with me. I looked at him to see if he was serious. It seemed he was."

The singer recalled a trip to the Venice Film Festival together, where Penn would introduce her to a new glitzy and glamorous world she was unfamiliar with, and he "took me to see the sights in Montartre and wrote me in notes that he hid in my pockets...I enjoyed Sean and would eventually fall in love."

However, this seemingly fairy tale romance ultimately came to an end the same year.

Penn, who had two children, Hopper and Dylan, with Wright, reunited with the House of Cards actress, and they married in 1996. Wright and Penn finalized their divorce in 2010.

Jewel went on to marry Ty Murray in 2008, before splitting in 2014. The pair have one child, Kase, together.