Penn, Alonso exchange insults at airport

Two-time Oscar-winner Sean Penn found himself in a war of words Sunday with actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who in 2010 wrote him an open letter criticizing his support of Venezuela President Hugo Chávez.

"I went to pick up my mother, who was coming from Miami," Alonso, 54, told morning host Steve Malzberg of the conservative Washington, D.C., radio station WMAL on Monday. "We were waiting for the suitcases" that American Airlines had lost, she said, when someone pointed out Penn, 51, at the same baggage carousel. "I've wanted to talk to him" since that open letter, she said, "but it never happened."

Seizing the opportunity, "I go, 'Hello,' and he smiles and says, 'Oh, you lost your bag too?' And I'm like, 'No, my mother [did].' And at that moment he recognizes me . . . and he goes, 'Oh, it's you.' . . . And he goes, 'I don't want to talk to you. You speak badly about me. You insult me on TV.' "

The encounter escalated to the point that he called her a pig and she called him "a communist ----."

The Cuba-born, Venezuela-raised Alonso, who played Penn's love interest in the 1988 police drama "Colors," told Malzberg she regretted using a vulgarism. "It would be nice if he apologizes. I am apologizing for saying that word, right now, here on your show. I'm not apologizing for calling him a communist."