Sean Penn: 'I applaud the spirit' of Occupy Wall Street

Academy award winning actor and activist Sean Penn appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight Friday evening and expressed positive sentiments for Occupy Wall Street.

"I applaud the spirit of what's happening now on Wall Street," he told host Morgan. "I hope that increased organization can come to it."

Penn also felt that a lack of accountability on the big banks should give critics of the Occupy demonstrations caution to chastise the movement's development.

"I think you have to be patient with something like this being organized, if you're going to be patient of the criminalization of Wall Street," he said, before shifting his focus to overall punishment for those in power.

"I remember when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, I think it was the beginning of time I've began to focus American politics and international politics," he said.

"Though the country was in need of unification, this was saying that there was not equal justice of the law, and that Richard Nixon should have gone to jail. And that if Richard Nixon had gone to jail, we would have suffered some increased division for a time."

"But I don't believe that those for example, the Bush administration, would have gone nearly so far to the troth, had they understood. It's always the toughest guy on the block with the least to lose. These were guys who would have had to most to lose if they would had understood that the justice system worked for them as well."

WATCH: Video from CNN, which appeared on October 14, 2011.