Eileen Ryan, a stage, television and film actress married the director Leo Penn and chose to pause her career to raise her three sons, the actors Sean and Chris Penn and the musician Michael Penn.

Ms. Ryan was in her late 20s and appearing in “The Iceman Cometh” at Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village in 1956 when she met Mr. Penn, who stepped into a role being vacated by Jason Robards. They married soon after. 

Her career was going well when her need to be a good mother became a stronger impulse, “I don’t think anybody could have felt stronger than I did about controlling my own destiny.” 

For many years her most important performance came in a supporting role in a home movie made by young Sean Penn and his neighbor Emilio Estevez, son of the actor Martin Sheen.  “I was a background mother screaming from the kitchen,” she said. 

Ms. Ryan went back to acting more regularly with her appearance in the 1986 film “At Close Range,” a crime drama in which she played the grandmother of characters played by her sons Sean and Chris. Two years later she played the mother of Sean Penn’s character in the movie “Judgment in Berlin,” a drama directed by Leo Penn whose stars also included Mr. Sheen. 

Eileen Ryan, lived her life her way.