As a teen, the up-and-coming actress was cast as the Oscar winner’s daughter in 2003’s “Mystic River.”

Emmy Rossum shares ‘profound’ lesson she learned from Sean Penn that changed how she behaved on set

As a teen, the up-and-coming actress was cast as the Oscar winner’s daughter in 2003’s “Mystic River.”

By Kathleen Perricone

August 4, 2026 4:29 p.m. ET

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Emmy Rossum; Sean Penn. Credit:

- Emmy Rossum shares what she learned from working with Sean Penn on 2003’s *Mystic River*.

- “He had a process and [was] unafraid to let the crew see it,” the actress recalls. “That was really profound because it impacted the way I would go onto future sets.”

- Rossum currently stars on the new Hulu crime series, *Furious*, as FBI agent Alice Black.

Emmy Rossum learned from some of the best in Hollywood on the set of her breakout film, 2003’s *Mystic River*.

At the age of 16, after several years with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, the young actress portrayed the ill-fated daughter of Sean Penn’s character, opposite an all-star cast of Oscar winners and nominees including Tim Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, and director Clint Eastwood.

On the set, Penn gave her some sound career advice: Choose roles that are “fun.” However, it was not what he said, but what he *did* that truly had a lasting impression on Rossum.

In ‘Mystic River’ (2003), Emmy Rossum played Katie, the daughter of Sean Penn’s character Jimmy.

“What I was most struck by when I worked with Sean was his complete security in knowing he had a process and being unafraid to let the crew see it,” she revealed to *Playboy* in a new interview. “I found that to be really bold and amazing. Coming from a more rigid background in opera, I had to show up and get it right on the first take. And he had a way of kind of… you got to see how the sausage was being made. That was really profound because it impacted the way I would go onto future sets.”

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She did heed Penn’s “fun” advice, although for Rossum, who played feisty Fiona Gallager on *Shameless* for nine seasons, that word translates to “something that’s a challenge,” she told the magazine.

“Like a [character that’s a] deeply layered onion that I’m struggling to get to the inside of,” she explained. “A lot of the fun of [acting] is getting to play people that are so different from yourself or, alternatively, getting to channel things that are very familiar.”

Rossum’s latest project, Hulu’s crime series *Furious*, is taking the actress out of character to play Alice Black, an FBI agent whose kink is violent sex.

Emmy Rossum stars in ‘Furious’ as FBI agent Alice Black.

Sarah Shatz/Disney

“She was in a relationship that was dominated by control and violence. That’s led to a relationship with her sexual self that is quite thorny,” Rossum explained to *Playboy*.

There’s a scene in the first episode that required the actress to “work around my own fears of what we were saying about [Alice],” she continued. “Liz [*Furious* creator Elizabeth Meriwether] is so bold. She likes to set a fire, and I like to run to it. The actor I was working with, we initially worked on choreography with our stunt coordinator to learn how to do the fight. I would rehearse with the male stunt double, and [he] would rehearse with the female stunt double, so that we could really understand the mechanics of the moves.”

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Now a mom of two, Rossum is still tight with the TV siblings she raised on *Shameless*.

This summer, they have plans for a game night as well as a day on the water “to go see some dolphins on Perry’s [Mattfield]’s boat,” she revealed. “The whole cast is just incredible and thriving.”

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Source: “EW Actors”