LIFE IS FAR MORE THAN `LOVELY' AT PENN CENTRAL; ACCOMPLISHED ACTING COUPLE AS SERIOUS ABOUT THEIR FILMS AS ABOUT EACH OTHER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn talk a lot about love these days. When it comes to talking about one another, however, one of the movies' most accomplished acting couples tend to keep things strictly professional.

``She's a fantastic actress,'' Penn says of his wife, ``which is always good; it feeds your work.''

``Knowing somebody as well as I know Sean, you have trust, which is the most important thing to have on the set,'' Wright Penn adds. ``Then you have the freedom to go anywhere with them. And I always think Sean's work is good. But I'm biased.''

And not alone. Penn has been considered one of the best actors in the business since his indelible 1982 portrayal of a stoned-out surfer dude in ``Fast Times at Ridgemont High.'' Yet he's only appeared twice on screen in the last seven years, in ``Carlito's Way'' and ``Dead Man Walking,'' the latter earning him an Oscar nomination.

But now Penn is back in a flurry of films, beginning with ``She's So Lovely,'' a job that won him the Best Actor Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Co-starring Wright Penn and John Travolta, the project, with which Penn has been involved off and on for many years, is a labor of love in every conceivable sense of the term.

``This guy doesn't let anybody or anything tell him that what he felt wasn't love,'' the notoriously picky Penn says of ``She's So Lovely's'' alcohol-addled, extendedly institutionalized Eddie. ``This movie believes that love exists and you can be true to it.''

``Sean doesn't think they're messed up,'' adds Wright Penn, who plays Eddie's marginally more stable wife, Maureen. ``He asks people who've seen it, `Have you ever had a better relationship?' and he's dead serious. I think he's out of his mind.

``But the movie was made to show how, despite how extremely wrong the circumstances are, the love was right between these two people,'' adds the actress, who's pretty choosy about her own roles and sometimes hits a jackpot such as ``Forrest Gump.'' ``It's about love. It's not about how we all judge in the '90s.''

If the preceding sounds like a page out of one of the late John Cassavetes' scenarios, it should. ``She's So Lovely'' is based on one of his unproduced screenplays that Penn had been trying to turn into a film since before the pioneering independent filmmaker's 1989 death. Directed by Cassavetes' son Nick (``Unhook the Stars''), ``Lovely'' is, like ``Faces'' and ``Minnie and Moskowitz'' and so many of the writer-director's other classics, utterly enamored of the insanity of love.

It requires more of a leap to decode personal meaning from the Penns' love talk. But it's not hard to imagine why they responded to this material. They've been together since the start of the decade (they co-starred in the 1990 ``State of Grace'') and have two children, but the relationship has had its rocky patches. In fact, they seemed over with for good early last year, until Penn no-showed the Academy Awards to be with Wright Penn when she was briefly hospitalized.

Any hiccups in this pairing, of course, pale before the certifiable looniness of Penn's first marriage, to Madonna. As disdainful of celebrity as he is committed to the artistic possibilities of acting and filmmaking, Penn's way of coping with the relentless media glare on that union too often involved alcohol and his fists, a combination that landed him in L.A. County Jail for a month in 1987.

Pulling up stakes

Penn hasn't punched out any photographers recently, but that does not mean he and his family have been free of trouble. Their Malibu house was destroyed by a wildfire several years ago, and Wright Penn's car was stolen at gunpoint from the driveway of her Santa Monica home last year. Little wonder, then, that the Penns pulled up stakes for good and moved to a small town in Northern California.

But there were other reasons for the June move.

``I grew up down here, so I know what that can be like,'' says Penn, the son of director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan. ``And this town is too distracting for me. There are too many ghosts here; the worst times in my life have been in this city.'' ``It's primarily the kids,'' Wright Penn adds. ``We never wanted to raise them here. And there's a vibe in L.A. that's just unhealthy; it feeds on insecurity and fear, especially about the repercussions of what you do or don't do.''

Wright Penn refers to the ``you're-only-as-good-as-your-last-movie'' mentality that drives ever-more money obsessed Hollywood. While neither actor subscribes to the point of view, however, both are doing rather well professionally in spite of it.

Wright Penn's first starring vehicle, ``Moll Flanders,'' was released last year, and she co-stars with William Hurt in the upcoming courtroom drama ``Loved.''

For his part, Penn seems to be making up for lost time with a vengeance. ``She's So Lovely'' kicks off something like a year-end Sean Penn film festival. He'll also appear in the thriller ``The Game,'' opening Sept. 12, and Oliver Stone's latest sex-and-violence romp ``U-Turn'' on Oct. 3. Penn also has a brief bit in Robert Downey Sr.'s eccentric comedy ``Hugo Pool,'' currently scheduled for release in November.

At the moment, Penn is in the South Pacific heading the huge cast of ``The Thin Red Line,'' James Jones' epic World War II story of the battle for Guadalcanal. Gary Oldman, Nick Nolte, Bill Pullman, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney, John Cusack and Travolta are also in the film, which is being directed by long-dormant, '70s cult hero Terrence Malick (``Badlands,'' ``Days of Heaven''), one of Penn's idols.

`As good as it gets'

``I think the greatest era in American filmmaking was the 1970s,'' Penn says. ``Being able to do this Cassavetes script, then work with Malick - it's as good as it gets.''

As good as it gets for someone who hates what he's doing, anyway. Penn has long made it clear that he'd much rather write and direct movies than act in them. He's helmed two dark tales about damaged families, ``The Indian Runner'' and ``The Crossing Guard,'' that underwhelmed critics and scared away audiences.

The only reason he has appeared in so many films of late, Penn claims, is that the time window between shooting ``She's So Lovely'' and ``Thin Red Line'' was not long enough to write and direct a picture of his own, so he took acting jobs instead.

``Mostly, I look forward to playing a role, and I often look back on it fondly,'' he admits. ``But being there doing it? It's just never enjoyable, at least the way I approach acting. It just always turns out that way.''

At one point, Penn had planned to direct ``She's So Lovely.'' The project couldn't get financed, due in some part to Penn's fixation on filming in black and white. It's been reported that Penn, who was an executive producer of the film, made some directorial calls anyway.

``To a degree it's true on any movie I'm involved with that I say what I think,'' he confesses, sort of. ``But I didn't make Nick redo the movie.''

The Penns think a lot about movies, theirs and others. It's a field where their shared passion and humor becomes abundantly evident.

``If you look at filmmaking as a community, there's a lot to be embarrassed about,'' he says. ``But then, sometimes, you're in a theater seeing (``Shine's'') Geoffrey Rush up there showing so much pain at the height of his greatest joy, and you go, `This is what I got into this thing for.' I think that there's an art there. I'd just like to see the balance shift more toward that.''

`` `Our favorite movies are usually films like `Breaking the Waves,' '' she says. ``We saw `Buddy' with the kids, but no, commercial movies aren't usually what we go for.''

``She's lying,'' Penn says with a laugh. ``She liked `Austin Powers'!''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `Lovely' times

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn on and off screen

(2) ``She's a fantastic actress,'' Sean Penn says of his wife, Robin Wright Penn, who says in turn, ``I always think Sean's work is good. But I'm biased.'' The couple co-star in ``She's So Lovely.''