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This Article is From Mar 12, 2016

Mexican Actress Criticizes Sean Penn In El Chapo Story

Mexican Actress Criticizes Sean Penn In El Chapo Story
Kate del Castillo accompanied Sean Penn to a secret October meeting with Guzman in Mexico. (AFP File Photo)
New York, United States: A prominent Mexican actress has added to the welter of criticism stacking up against Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn over meeting Mexican drug baron Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman last year.

Kate del Castillo accompanied Penn to a secret October meeting with Guzman in Mexico, an encounter that Penn turned into a 10,000-word article published by Rolling Stone magazine in January.

The article came out the day after Guzman was captured following six months on the run from jail in Mexico.

Del Castillo grumbled in an interview with The New Yorker that the Hollywood star and ex-husband of Madonna did not reveal he was working on an article until she was translating his conversation with Guzman.

Penn says he discussed his intentions in their first meeting and again en route to their meeting with Guzman, The New Yorker reported.

Del Castillo hoped instead that Penn would collaborate with her on a film project about Guzman, one of the world's most notorious drug traffickers blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in Mexico.

Penn's article alleged that uniformed government soldiers allowed their convoy to pass after identifying Guzman's son Alfredo.

"Wow. So it is, the power of a Guzman face. And the corruption of an institution," Penn wrote.

But Del Castillo told The New Yorker that the convoy did no go through a military checkpoint nor did government soldiers wave them on.

The actress also complained that Penn implied she had encouraged romantic-style overtures from Guzman, when in fact her dealings were purely professional with an eye to working on a movie project.

Penn faced enormous criticism over the January 9 article that poured scorn on the information he obtained, accusing him of going easy on a man blamed for thousands of deaths and for contributing to US drug addiction.

Penn subsequently expressed regret over the article, telling CBS it had failed in his apparent intention of sparking new debate about the US war on drugs.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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