AP Photo/Jae C. HongThere's this old saying about heat and kitchens, but we won't go there.
Sean Penn has been a member of the Hollywood community for ages. He knows how this works. Sometimes the critics love him—he has quite a few statuettes, after all—and sometimes, whether it's fair or not, they don't.
Apparently, some cynics have been especially hard on him lately over the work he's doing in Haiti. Let's just say we're really glad we've been applauding it.
"I haven't had an awful lot of time to pay attention to them," he tells CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Lara Logan in an interview airing this weekend. "You know, do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah, you know, but I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it."
Whether you shame celebs for involvement in such things or not, he is spending his energy on lending a hand, and he's even getting his kids involved.
The actor recently returned from the earthquake-torn country alongside his daughter Dylan, 18, and son Hopper Jack, 16. And he put them to work while they were there.
"Oh, they're going to help! They're going to be my slaves while we're there!" he laughed. "I think that they've had the experience, as I have, that the first person served by service is the server. You know, there's nobody in the world that isn't looking for a kind of purpose in life, and tangible purpose is the most immediately recognizable."
We'd clap for that as well, but our ears eyes are still ringing. Hoping "people die screaming of rectal cancer"?! Yeesh!
(Originally published March 5, 2010, at 11:57 a.m. PT)
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Here are some other Do-Gooders, though!