James Franco

James Franco (born April 19, 1978, Palo Alto, California, U.S.) is an American actor, director, and writer whose rakish charm and chiseled good looks augmented an ability to bring sincerity and gravitas to characters ranging from addled drug dealers to comic book villains.

Early life and career

The eldest of three children, Franco was raised in Palo Alto, California, by his mother, a children’s book author, and his father, a businessman. A strong student, Franco nonetheless dropped out of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), after his first year in order to pursue acting. While taking classes at Playhouse West in Los Angeles, he secured a series of roles in unremarkable television movies and forgettable teen fare. His casting as a cocky high-school slacker in the Judd Apatow-produced television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000)—later a cult favourite—brought him to wider attention.

Breakthrough in the 2000s

It was, however, Franco’s performance as James Dean in the eponymous television movie (2001) that established him as a major talent. His evocation of that silver-screen idol won him a Golden Globe Award for best actor in a miniseries or television movie. As Harry Osborn, best friend to Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002), a film adaptation of the comic book, Franco proved himself adept at shaping his talents to the broad sensibilities of the genre. He returned for two further installments of the franchise, Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007). Films including the crime drama City by the Sea (2002), the mythological retelling Tristan + Isolde (2006), and the World War I fighter-pilot drama Flyboys (2006), though poorly received, showcased Franco’s versatility.

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While working his role as a jocular marijuana dealer for laughs in Pineapple Express (2008)—a stoner comedy costarring fellow Freaks and Geeks alumnus Seth Rogen, who collaborated on the screenplay with Apatow—Franco simultaneously evoked the character’s loneliness and disaffection. He won further praise as a lover of gay rights activist Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn) in Milk (2008) and as Allen Ginsberg in Howl (2010). His performance as a man forced to cut off his own arm after a climbing accident in 127 Hours (2010) earned Franco his first Academy Award nomination for best actor.

Later movies

In 2011 Franco and actress Anne Hathaway cohosted the Oscar ceremony. Later that year he appeared in Your Highness, a bawdy comedy set in the Middle Ages, and in the big-budget science-fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Franco subsequently starred as the title character in Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), which imagined a backstory for the enigmatic wizard of popular literature and film. For Spring Breakers (2013), a portrait of youthful debauchery on the Florida coast, he transformed into a garishly styled drug dealer and rapper. He also appeared as an exaggerated version of himself in This Is the End (2013), an apocalyptic comedy codirected by Rogen. In Lovelace (2013), a biopic about pornographic film actress Linda Lovelace, Franco portrayed Hugh Hefner. He evinced a meth-dealing Southerner in the action film Homefront (2013) and a man battling his ex-wife for custody of their son in the drama Third Person (2013).

In the irreverent The Interview, also codirected by and costarring Rogen, Franco played a talk-show host who is tasked with assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. The film, slated for release in December 2014, was pulled by its distributor, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., in the wake of a hack of the company’s computer system in November and terrorist threats later made by the hackers, who were thought to be acting on orders from North Korea. It was ultimately released on Christmas at a small number of independent theatres as well as on cable television and online streaming video platforms. The following year Franco portrayed convicted murderer Christian Longo in True Story. The film was based on a memoir by former New York Times reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill), who formed a strange bond with Longo after the killer assumed his identity while attempting to evade arrest.

Franco’s character in the miniseries 11.22.63 (2016), an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, which appeared on television streaming network Hulu, must travel back in time and attempt to prevent the assassination of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. Franco’s other credits in 2016 included the comedy Why Him?, in which he played the rich and vulgar boyfriend of a woman whose father detests him. In the HBO TV series The Deuce (2017–19), he portrayed twin brothers who become involved in the pornography industry in 1970s New York City. In 2019 he lent his voice to the animated comedy Arctic Dogs.

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Other work

Styling himself as a latter-day Renaissance man, Franco was also a visual artist and a painter; he characterized his guest appearance (2009–12) as an artist named Franco on the daytime soap opera General Hospital as performance art. In 2005 he directed his first of numerous films, The Ape and Fool’s Gold. He also cowrote and appeared in both movies, as he would for many of his directorial efforts. He later helmed the Hart Crane biopic The Broken Tower (2011) and adaptations (2013, 2014) of William Faulkner’s novels As I Lay Dying (1930) and The Sound and the Fury (1929). Franco also adapted (2013) Cormac McCarthy’s novel Child of God (1974). In 2016 he directed the drama In Dubious Battle, which was based on a John Steinbeck novel (1936) about striking farmworkers. The following year he directed and starred in The Disaster Artist, which recounted the filming of The Room (2003), a notoriously bad movie that became a cult favourite. For his performance, Franco received a Golden Globe Award. His later directorial efforts included The Pretenders (2018) and Zeroville (2019).

Franco wrote short fiction, some of which was published in Palo Alto: Stories (2010); he also appeared in a 2013 film adaptation. The novelistic Actors Anonymous (2013) spliced autobiographical episodes with imaginings of the lives of struggling actors in Hollywood. Stories from A California Childhood (2013)—a pastiche of childhood experiences, photographs, artwork, and fictionalized memories—were adapted as the film Yosemite (2015), in which he also appeared. His poetry collection Straight James/Gay James (2016) toys with his sexually ambiguous public persona.

Franco eventually returned to UCLA, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing (2008), and he pursued a series of further degrees, among them a master’s in writing (2010) from Columbia University and a master’s in film (2011) from New York University.