Dramatic Penn 'Exhausted' Mcgovern

The Oscar-nominated star met Penn on the set of Racing With The Moon in 1984, and enjoyed a whirlwind romance, getting engaged when she was just 23.

But the Ragtime actress reveals Penn's intensity proved too much for her to handle, because the notoriously fiery star was always blowing issues out of proportion.

She tells Britain's Daily Mail, "Sean was an important relationship for me. It was the frenzy of Sean's feeling that overwhelmed me. It was also the first real experience of boys I'd had, which was kind of nice. In the beginning it was fun. We were a similar age and in the same place professionally, so were experiencing everything together. But there's a drama to the way Sean lives every bit of his life. That's what he's all about. I'm not someone who breathes drama every minute of the day and he really, genuinely does - it's what he thrives on.

"When something's tragic, it's a tragic to the gazillionth degree. He'll virtually hang himself from the rafters... He was the kind of guy who was like, 'This is my girl, I've got to own her.' It was all dramatics. But it was so exhausting, I couldn't sustain it."