Penn died Tuesday night at his New York home, his daughter Molly told the paper.
Penn's work is credited with ushering in a new American film aesthetic, which showed more realistic portrayals of violence rather than the idealized portrayals that had preceded him.
Penn made his first feature film, The Left-Handed Gun, in 1958 after directing numerous live television dramas. He got his first Oscar nomination for The Miracle Worker in 1962, in which Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke both won acting Oscars.
He was nominated again for Bonnie and Clyde, which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the notorious American bankrobbers. The film's ending, in which the couple dies in a relentless hail of police machine-gun fire, is considered one of the great moments of movie history and ignited a critical hailstorm as its violent finale drew comparisons with the Vietnam War.
Penn's other films included The Chase, Mickey One, Alice's Restaurant, Little Big Man, Night Moves, The Missouri Breaks and Four Friends.
"Had he only directed Bonnie and Clyde, he'd be a director of note," film critic Leonard Maltin told The Times. "But that was simply the most successful of these highly individual, often idiosyncratic films that he made in his heyday."
