Jewel sure is full of bombshell secrets.
And she just revealed another intriguing love interest she had back in the ’90s. In her newest book, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, she is revealing that she got involved with Sean Penn while he was on a break from then-girlfriend Robin Wright.
She said, “I enjoyed Sean. And would eventually fall in love.”
Jewel recalled how even her father was surprised when Penn reached out, saying, “One day my dad came to find me saying, ‘Jewel, you must be getting some kooky fans out there in the Lower 48. Some guy just prank-called and said he was Sean Penn.”
Her father didn’t believe the voice on the other end of the call was actually the Hollywood star and hung up on him, but Penn would call back and eventually touch base with the musician. Penn was working on his film The Crossing Guard and had seen Jewel on Conan O’Brien’s show and apparently liked what he saw and heard.
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“He wanted me to compose a song for [his movie]. I told him I would and he said he would meet me anywhere to screen the movie. I could name the day. I gave him my cell number and figured I would never hear from him again.”
Boy was she wrong! Who knew that first conversation would spark a clandestine love affair.
Jewel ended up writing the song “Emily” for Penn’s flick and admitted, “We spoke on the phone a lot and he was fantastic at first and I did not mind one bit.”
And while Jewel was 14 years his junior, she was not going to be taken for a ride. She continued, “I was no fool and knew I was most likely a trifle to him. I intended to give him no such conquest. I put that man through his paces and he took it in stride. He began to court me in earnest, following me around on tour, acting as my de facto roadie.”
And she wasn’t kidding about putting him through his paces. She said, “I moved very slowly with him but he was a persistent and inventive suitor, and I enjoyed it immensely.”
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In the particularly lyrical way Jewel has of describing her budding and secret relationship, she said, “I kept our burgeoning relationship very quiet,” because it seemed she thought they were both very serious about falling in love.
Penn told her, “It would be impossible not to fall in love with me.” They even attended the Venice Film Festival together where Penn “whispered in [her] ear” to explain everyone’s backstory since, as she said, “it was not my world and I was pretty sure it never would be.”
And then, just like that, they were done.
They split after not even a year of undercover dating and Penn went on to marry his previous love, Wright, and have two children.
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