Penn Badgley: Fame is f***ing awful

8 June 2019

Penn Badgley thinks fame is "f***ing awful".

Penn Badgley

The 32-year-old actor found success playing Dan Humphrey on the CW show 'Gossip Girl', but has said he isn't a fan of fame, which he has described as an acronym standing for "F***ing Awful Man, Extremely".

Speaking to Gina Rodriguez for Variety magazine's Actors on Actors series, Penn said: "It's boring to me. [It stands for] F***ing Awful Man, Extremely!. You're dancing on a razor's edge. When you falter, it's very public. When you break up, it's public."

Penn has been married to singer Domino Kirke since February 2017, but previously underwent high profile splits from Blake Lively - who is now married to Ryan Reynolds - in 2010, and Zoe Kravitz, who is now romancing Karl Glusman, in 2013.

The 'You' star has expressed his dislike for fame in the past, as he once claimed to have been "literally molested" by his fans.

Speaking in September last year, he said: "I think as an actor you can become an object of desire, which is something women are already accustomed to more or less around the world. I mean, I don't want to sound sensationalist, but I've literally been molested - just in the literal sense of the word - by many people in the moment. Because that's what they do."

Penn later clarified his comments, saying that whilst he didn't want to "confess a personal trauma" with his allegations, he was simply trying to explain how his boundaries had been "violated".

He explained: "The point of my comment was not to confess a personal trauma. I was speaking about the way emotional and physical boundaries are violated for someone in the public eye, who is seen as an object of desire. Depending on so many factors, it can range from conscious abuse to something very unconscious - and that is the point I was making, cautiously, in the context of a conversation about fanaticism and cultural norms which support manipulative or abusive behaviour. These are the same norms which support predatory men, but not exclusively predatory men. They affect, and infect, us all."