Sean Penn has told unvaccinated film fans not to venture out to the cinema until they’ve been jabbed.

The actor and filmmaker made his comments at the premiere of his new film Flag Day, which people could only attend if they wore masks in the screening and provided proof of vaccination for COVID-19.

“I have to say that I do request people who are not vaccinated, don’t go to the cinemas,” Penn said. “Stay home until you are convinced of these very clearly safe vaccines.”

Penn recently made headlines for refusing to return to the set of his upcoming film Gaslit until everyone on the production had been vaccinated.

According to Deadline, Penn insisted to the production company that vaccinations across the entire production should be mandatory. He offered to facilitate the vaccination effort free of charge through his organisation CORE (Community Organised Relief Effort).

“This is one of those things that should be mandatory,” Penn recently told Yahoo. “My deep belief, personally, is that it’s no different having everybody being able to drive 100 miles an hour in a car.”

Last year, the Oscar-winning actor set up a free Malibu testing site with CORE, which is helping in the ongoing crisis.

According to USA Today, Penn hopes to “save lives and alleviate depletion of resources”.

He added: “We have an infrastructure in place to respond, and so we decided that we would if we could be value added.

“It’s something that we can adapt to very quickly with the training of the Los Angeles Fire Department initially. And then we’re able to take all those firemen and put them back in to serve the people in the way that we need them to.”