James Franco Quotes

We tell specific stories about ourselves to ourselves and we're all the heroes of our own lives. But you live through certain experiences with other people, and sometimes they have very different takes on what happened.

There's a large chunk of me in all the parts. As an actor, I got involved largely because I want to let things out. The best acting is that that is most real and the only way to do that, is to genuinely feel it.

I don't consider weed to be any worse than having a beer.

I teach a lot - I teach at the UCLA and USC graduate film programs - and a lot of those projects are my students' projects that I act in or I do a cameo.

My style is casual-chic? Casual-messy?

When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I had really bad buckteeth. I didn't want to get braces, but my mom said I couldn't be an actor if I didn't get the braces. So, I got the braces.

There's a tacit belief that actors shouldn't write books, they're sort of allowed to direct movies but there will be a lot of skepticism, and they shouldn't do artwork or music. There are these invisible roadblocks to gain entree to these areas for actors, and you kind of have to crash through those invisible barriers.

You just don't really rehearse kissing scenes, whether it's male or female.

Make your characters interested in something. Striving for something. In need of something. Good at something. This will make them likeable and interesting.

I don't like sleeping in a bed.

If liking Katy Perry and drinking margaritas is gay, then who wants to be straight?!

I love that the idea of examining memory, and the way memory is edited was made more interesting because it was being filtered through a writer.

For April Fools Day, someone played a really cruel joke on me. They stole ALL my mirrors and I had to go hours without seeing myself. I mean, I couldn't even do my daily affirmations. What kind of world is this? I tell you, it's artists like myself that really suffer.

I'm going to try to not let anyone put me in a box, and that certainly applies to the things I do outside of acting.

You don't really prepare for a kissing scene.

Read Frank's poem, "Advice to the Players." It talks about all of this, about the human need to create.

There's a long tradition of teen comedies where the kids are getting drunk on beer and whatever else, so smoking a joint to me is no worse than having a beer. So, if someone has a problem with it, I'll just tell them to relax.

When I went to film school about three years ago, the first two years you're required to make a series of short films. I started making films based on short poems.

You work really hard to make it, and maybe you get some acclaim, but then you realize there are certain limitations as an actor.

I might have to stumble a little bit more in public than others, but that's fine, I don't mind, I've developed a thick skin.

All is good. Don't worry, the pain will help you. You'll get into some trouble, but it will work out in the end.

I was a black center in the middle of all the nature. I was nothing, but I could do anything.

This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad, and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.

I guess in some people's lives, no one tells you what to be, and so you be nothing.

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

I am not going to be the guy who's not pulling his weight.

I drank from the bottle again and it was a scary plunge because I always wanted to take too much. It hurt, but it was also impressive, like being in the hands of a bigger force. And because of that, a relief.

When I was younger, I thought, 'Ok, I'm supposed to do this project because it'll help my career,' but that didn't work because I ended up doing movies that I worked really hard on but I didn't really like and they didn't turn out well, so it was like I lost double. Once I just started working with people and projects I believed in, everything changed and I suddenly had a career that I loved and that I was proud of.

Not having any real direction, one writer would lead me to another.

I get like six or so hours of sleep a night.

Quite Franc-ly, I think I am an asset to this world we live in. I know that if I didn't exist, there would be some truly upset people just waiting for me. A life without Franco is like a kitten without fur. That's what my reflection told me.

Fight scenes are really more like dances than they are fights, because you're depending on your partner to do the right move at the right time. Yes, a tough person or somebody who knows what they're doing will look better in a fight scene, but it also has a lot to do with the other person.

I worked the drive-through at McDonald's and tried out different accents - Italian, Russian, Irish.

Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there's any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about ...

Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like.

Sometimes I think to myself, what should James Franco say next? And then it comes to me. Boobs.

Villains can often be one note and I would say in that case, it's not fun to play the villain. It's fun to play the villain if he a) has dimension and b) the villain gets to do all the things in the movie that in life he would get punished for. In the movie, you're applauded for them if you do them with panache. And so that's why it's more fun to play the villain.

The general view is that actors start on soaps and then maybe graduate to prime-time television or film; normally you don't see a film actor going to do a soap.

I'm a big cardigan sweater guy.

The selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, 'Hello, this is me.'

If this is the only life, then why I'm not just doing everything I want to do.

You say I sucked at the Oscars. I was a genius at the Oscars. That was experimental tuxedo sleep art.

The man is angry, the man
Is destructive, the man wants more.
The woman is more, the woman is all.

Adapting a book is essentially a collaboration, whether the author is alive or dead.

If you just read the book, you're taking in the narrative, you're taking in the characters, you're understanding it in a certain way. If you make a movie it's really an act of translation.

When I research a role it does get a little crazy and maybe even a little stupid.

A lot of the people in San Francisco think of themselves as healers - not just as people delivering this base service, but giving their clients spiritual help. It's almost like being an actor, playing a different part for each trick.

I view filmmaking as a director's medium.

I don't have many hobbies. If I think of hobbies, maybe ping pong. But I don't have a desire to get a ping pong medal.

I worked at a McDonald's drive-through. I could always tell when girls were interested: They'd drive around again and say, 'I forgot something.'

I still don't like going to bed alone.

I feel there are so many things in this world that have been and are being created that I could spend the rest of my life thinking about, and I couldn't cover all the things I'm interested in. That to me is what makes life sweet-learning and exploring.

If you have a profession that depends on what you look like, you can't blame somebody for caring about that. It's part of their job. So it's vanity but it's also not in a lot of cases. It's being professional.

Showing the addiction and unusual sexual practices are ways of just outlining a much bigger character trait.

I love to bring humour into my work. Because comedy is not a huge part of the art world. And big-business film takes itself very seriously.

For whatever reason, I have an emotional life that wants to come out.

I feel like because I've done more gay characters, gay scenes, or gay projects than most straight actors, people see it as some sort of mission. It's more of a case-by-case basis, and just trying to capture figures that I love. I guess that a lot of the figures that I love were gay.

I needed an outlet in high school and came across painting. I've actually been painting longer than I've been acting. A movie is a collaborative effort, and with painting you just have yourself.

Because acting was my only professional outlet, I put a ton of pressure on the roles that I did. I overstepped my bounds, I tried to control things that were out of my purview as an actor and in some cases even tried to direct my scenes because I felt I knew how they should run rather than trust the director.

Create your world around your work. Create your work around your life. Let other people help you shape it.

There's a tendency, when you're directing yourself, not to give the performance as much care, because you feel like there's too much focus on yourself, or that all these people are just standing around setting everything up, waiting for you.

I love collaboration of all kinds, and I love the way that collaboration pulls me into directions I wouldn't go in if I was working on my own.

He was so. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.

In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It's like she's speaking to us.

There's so much pressure put on relationships to deliver the satisfaction of life. And to me, that is just not the answer. I feel like it should be something in addition to what you love or be a part of that.

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.

I get to work with incredibly talented young filmmakers and students, and their attitudes and relationship with film is still so pure. That re-inspires me and reminds me why I got into it and what I love about film, and allows me a little reprieve from the business side of it. And it rekindles my love of film.

My name is James Edward Franco. Ted is a nickname for Edward. That's what my parents called me. I also got 'Teddy Ruxpin' a lot. It just got to a point where I got sick of it, so when a teacher called out 'James Franco' my junior year of high school, I didn't correct her.

Sometimes it is painful to be oneself; at other times it seems impossible to escape oneself.

I got arrested for graffiti. I got arrested - a lot of, like, underage drinking, drunk in public, shoplifting, you know, your various, like, suburban arrests, I guess.

I don't cast somebody that I think is like my younger self.

One of the things I've learned as a filmmaker is to have some aspect of the movie be something that I admire greatly, whether that's an actor I'm working with, the subject matter, or a book.

Barry had done it with her, the girl I loved, and it had meant nothing to him; Tanya would die and no one would care; and there were billions of bodies alive on earth and they would all be buried and ground into dirt; and Picasso was a master at age sixteen and I was a perfect shit.

If I'm working on a film, I'll do sit-ups for before I shoot. Like, 100 in the morning or something.

I went to NYU graduate film school and met Pam [Romanowsky], and after doing a few things with her I thought she had the right sensibility and that she could figure it [The Adderall Diaries] out.

I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year or two or three.

Teens today rule the world. The whole culture - movies, music - is pointed at young people. They have so 'much' power.

My job is what I love. I don't need an escape from it.

I have high aspirations. I want to be an architect.

Directing, editing, and everything about filmmaking has definitely changed me as an actor.

I guess what I enjoy most is directing, because it incorporates all aspects of filmmaking. Directing is in the same line as acting - both are popularity contests, and in both you're trying to tell a story through the film as a medium.

We all age. You shouldn't discount it as a subject for a film. Just because the characters are dealing with issues that you might not deal with for another 45 years doesn't mean you won't like it.

The wind came in languid gusts like whispered reminders.

Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it.

There's no relationship that I find that's closer than a creative relationship.

They're just peanut butter and jealous! Haters gonna hate, and ain't-ers gonna ain't.

Almost all the movies I've directed are adaptations. And I think what I found when I went to film school, where they try to push you to find your voice or your thing, is that I got a lot of things out of adaptations.

I've been acting for many years now, and I find there's nothing I enjoy more than making films with my friends and people I like, who also are the funniest people around.

School allowed me to have outlets so that some of the pressure was taken off the acting. Every role in every movie, I used to live or die by. Once I had these new outlets, I relaxed a lot more.

I'm a huge Cormac McCarthy fan and have read every book of his.

I become kind of obsessive about research.

If the work is good, what does it matter? I'm doing it because I love it. Why not do as many things I love as I can? As long as the work is good.

Acting is an art form and you want to take roles that are challenged and it's more of a challenge I think to play dark characters. Not that I want to always play those, but it is a challenge and challenges are rewarding and fun.

If many people love me, then I must be important.

I don't go on vacation. I don't really need vacation.

You want to be interesting? Be interested.

I'm an actor, I do movies, and I need to find somebody who enjoys that kind of stuff. It's not like, "Oh, I have my work time, and we go on a date, and it better be darn fun and exciting!" I think it should all coalesce a bit more.

I used to care about how I looked. Now I don't care as much. Maybe it's because I'm so handsome.

I've come to a point where I just want to do movies that I just believe in. I have come to an understanding of filmmaking, a new understanding where I believe it's a director's medium. That means working with people that I believe in.

I still work really hard, but I like to think I'm a little smarter about at least the type of movie I'm getting into.