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Sean Penn: Oscar Showdown With Robin Wright's New Boyfriend?

Sources exclusively reveal that the bad-boy actor has a confrontation with Hurt Locker producer Greg Shapiro backstage at the Academy Awards. Find out what happened next

By Marc Malkin Mar 08, 2010 7:51 PMTags
Sean Penn, Greg ShapiroRobyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Sean Penn may be at it again.

Sources tell me that the two-time Academy Award winner was banned from last night's annual Governors Ball shortly after the ceremony at the Kodak Theatre had ended.

The Milk star apparently had some sort of backstage confrontation with Greg Shapiro, one of the newly minted Oscar-winning producers of The Hurt Locker. But if you think it could have had something to do with Penn's politics and the war movie, not so fast...

Shapiro happens to be dating Penn's former ladylove, Robin Wright.

Minutes after Penn and Shapiro came face-to-face, "Academy officials...said he was banned from the Ball," one of my sources said.

Penn's rep insists there was no confrontation and that the actor chose not to stop by the Ball. A rep for the Academy would only say, "Sean Penn chose not to attend the Governors Ball." (Update: Late this morning, another rep for the Academy emailed me, insisting that Penn was never not welcome at the Ball.)

Penn eventually made his way to the Sunset Tower Hotel afterparty. "Fine," he told E! News' Ashlan Gorse when she asked him how his night was.

Earlier in the day, Wright and Shapiro appeared to be very much a couple—and a very happy couple at that. I actually saw them enjoying a meal at Cheebo in L.A., where they canoodled over breakfast while reading the Los Angeles Times together.

Wright, 43, and Shapiro, 36, were first reported to be dating last month by Hollywood Life. He is a producer on the upcoming Conspirator, a Robert Redford-directed drama about the only woman accused of conspiring with a group of men to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Wright filed for divorce from Penn in August.

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