# Penn Badgley

Penn Dayton Badgley (born November 1, 1986) is an American actor, known for his roles as Dan Humphrey in The CW teen drama series Gossip Girl (2007–2012) and as Joe Goldberg in the Netflix thriller series You (2018–present). He was included on People magazine's list of "25 Beauties at 25" and BuddyTV's "TV's 100 Sexiest Men" list, both in 2011.

## Quotes

* I think anybody who gets to that stage in reality is so beyond self-loathing. If you hate yourself, well, then you're going to turn some of that hatred on the world around you.
** "Penn Badgley Isn't Who You Fans Think He Is" in InStyle (14 October 2021)
* Honestly, for me, acting is just a very spiritual thing where I’m just present with the words I read on the screen, and when it’s awful and it kind of makes your skin crawl, then that’s what comes up and that’s what I do.
** "Penn Badgley weighs in on the worst thing his 'Gossip Girl' character ever did" in TODAY (22 October 2021)
* I will say that honestly, as an actor ... As a person, I intellectualize plenty before and after, right? But really, as an actor during, I don't need to apply that same intellectual process because, first of all, when you play a character for this long, you just kind of know... It's very intuitive.
** "'You': Penn Badgley on Joe's Wild Story in Season 3 and How Season 4 May Be "Quite Different"" in Collider (18 October 2021)
* I certainly had the great bounty of drawing on my own experience, becoming a new biological parent, and that was quite natural.
** "Penn Badgley Explores Joe Goldberg's 'Primal' Parenting In You Season 3" in ELLE (18 October 2021)
* It doesn't matter who you are as an actor; that's really always in the script. It wouldn't make sense a lot of times to drastically change things. It would threaten to change the story arc and all that kind of stuff. I think really what an actor does is an instrument, not a player.
** "Penn Badgley Explores Joe Goldberg's 'Primal' Parenting In You Season 3" in ELLE (18 October 2021)
* I think especially television is a conversation between the writer and the audience, and they're bringing all of their humanity to it. The actors are really just this conduit in the middle, who everybody kind of thinks of like the player, but no, we're really the instrument.
** "Penn Badgley Explores Joe Goldberg's 'Primal' Parenting In You Season 3" in ELLE (18 October 2021)
* To me, Joe is this work in progress in dismantling and dissecting the myriad privileges that a young, attractive, white man carries with him. I’m not suggesting that the rest of the world shouldn’t have these so-called privileges. But I think when only one group has them, it’s actually a horrific blindness when it comes to being in touch with humanity. I think it’s material privilege but it’s not emotional or psychological or spiritual privilege, and it seems that that can be a great bondage.
** "What Penn Badgley Wants Us to Learn From ‘You’" in The New York Times (24 January 2019)
* It's not entirely fair to put that on the viewer because we're purposefully creating a device that is meant to be provocative—and hopefully thought-provoking—but not just titillating.
** "You's Penn Badgley Can Go from Zero to Serial Killer in Mere Seconds" in Harpers Bazaar (11 January 2020)
* There are so many facets to the ways we learn about ourselves, and then therefore treat ourselves and others; the stories that young boys and girls learn about themselves, and the way that that translates into the ways they treat each other. We learn these lessons at home, we learn them on television and in movies and books.
** "Penn Badgley Talks You, Gender Equality, and Violence Against Women" in Teen Vogue (28 January 2020)
* I’m just thinking of the ways the political discourse would look if women had been present and influential in it since its inception. What kind of time would be taken for any kind of discourse or debate? It might seem like a kind of silly, esoteric idea, but there’s so much about the way that our thoughts are allowed to even form and progress in a social structure that is so intensely male dominant and has been for so long.
** "Penn Badgley Talks You, Gender Equality, and Violence Against Women" in Teen Vogue (28 January 2020)

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Penn Badgley on Wikipedia
* Media related to Penn Badgley on Wikimedia Commons