The actor Sean Penn, who made a controversial visit to Iraq last winter, is considering going back, and this time publishing his accounts of life in the war-torn country for the San Francisco Chronicle, the paper's editor Phil Bronstein said yesterday.
"He brings a very keen director's and actor's eye to slices of life in Baghdad," said Bronstein, an old friend of Penn's who read some of the unpublished material Penn wrote during his last trip to Iraq.
Bronstein said the arrangement with Penn remains informal, since he has not yet decided if and when to return to Iraq. Penn sparked controversy last winter when he travelled to Iraq to speak out against the planned US war to topple Saddam Hussein.
But if he were to return, he would probably stay away from the most violent scenes and focus on everyday life, said Bronstein, who described Penn's earlier dispatches from Iraq "as short vignettes that caught moments in people's lives and what they were doing - kind of like a reporter's notebook".