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James Franco
Franco at the Spider-Man 3 premiere, April 2007
Born	James Edward Franco April 19, 1978 (1978-04-19) (age 30) Palo Alto, California
Occupation	actor, director, screenwriter, film producer, artist
Years active	1999-present
Awards won Golden Globe Awards Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture 2002 James Dean

James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is a Golden Globe-winning American actor, director, screenwriter, film producer, and artist. He began acting during the late 1990s, appearing on the short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks and starring in several teen films. In 2001, he received worldwide attention and praise for his portrayal of James Dean in the made for television biographical film James Dean, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

He became well known since the early 2000s when he was cast as Harry Osborn in the Spider-Man films. In 2005, he starred in the war film The Great Raid, in which he played Robert Prince, captain of a Ranger Battalion who rescued prisoners of war from the Cabanatuan prison camp during World War II. The following year, he had starring roles in three movies, Tristan & Isolde, Annapolis, and Flyboys. In 2008, he starred in the comedy/stoner film Pineapple Express opposite his Freaks and Geeks co-star Seth Rogen. He is set to appear in Nights in Rodanthe and Milk.

Biography

Early life

Franco was born April 19, 1978 in Palo Alto, California, the son of Betsy (née Verne), a poet, author and editor, and Doug Franco.^[1] His maternal grandmother, Mitzi Levine Verne, runs the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland, Ohio.^[2] Franco's father is of Portuguese and Swedish descent^[3] and Franco's mother is Jewish,^[4][5] a descendant of immigrants from Russia.^[1] Franco grew up in California with his two younger brothers, Tom and Dave, and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, where he was elected by his senior class as the student with the "best smile".^[1] He then enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an English major, and studied acting.^[6] He dropped out after his freshman year and chose to pursue a professional career as an actor, taking acting lessons with Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West.^[1]

Career

After fifteen months of training, he began auditioning in Los Angeles, California, and got his first break in 1999, after he was cast in a leading role on the short-lived but well-reviewed television series Freaks and Geeks.^[7] Franco has since described the series as "one of the most fun" work experiences that he has had.^[8] Franco's first major film was the romantic comedy Whatever It Takes (2000), where he met his co-star, now ex-girlfriend Marla Sokoloff.^[9][10] He was subsequently cast as the title role in director Mark Rydell's 2001 TV biopic James Dean.^[11][12] Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Franco could have walked through the role and done a passable Dean, but instead gets under the skin of this insecure, rootless young man."^[13] He was distinguished with a Golden Globe Award,^[14] as well as being nominated for an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.^[15][16]

Franco was originally considered for the lead role of Spider-Man/Peter Parker in the film version of Spider-Man, but was instead cast in the supporting role of Harry Osborn, the son of the villainous Green Goblin.^[17][18] The success of the Spider-Man film led him to reprise the role in two sequels, Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).^[19][20] Franco was cast in the 2002 drama City by the Sea.^[1][21] Franco has also co-starred with Neve Campbell in Robert Altman's The Company (2003).^[22] He appeared in the 2005 war film The Great Raid, in which he portrayed Robert Prince, a captain in the United States' Army elite in the sixth Ranger Battalion, to plan the rescue of prisoners of war from the Cabanatuan prison camp.^[23][24]

In 2006, Franco co-starred with Tyrese Gibson in Annapolis^[25] and played legendary hero Tristan in Tristan & Isolde, a dramatization of the Tristan and Iseult story also starring English actress Sophia Myles.^[26] He then trained with the stunt team "The Blue Angels" and received a pilot's license in preparation for his role in Flyboys,^[27] which was released in September of 2006; the same month, Franco appeared briefly in The Wicker Man, a horror film starring Nicolas Cage, who directed him in Sonny.^[28] Franco made cameo appearances in The Holiday and Knocked Up.^[12][29] He was also featured in the mockumentary, "Finding Ben Stone", on the two-disc edition of Knocked Up, where he gets fired from the lead role.^[30]

He starred in the 2008 film Pineapple Express, a comedy co-starring and co-written by Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow, both of whom worked with Franco on Freaks and Geeks.^[8][31] In the New York Times review of the film, critic Manohla Dargis wrote: "He’s delightful as Saul, loosey-goosey and goofy yet irrepressibly sexy, despite that greasy curtain of hair and a crash pad with a zero WAF (Woman Acceptance Factor). It’s an unshowy, generous performance and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious."^[32]

Franco has been signed to star opposite Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant's upcoming Harvey Milk bio-pic Milk.^[33] On September 20, 2008, James hosted Saturday Night Live.^[34]

Personal life

In 2008, Franco received his undergraduate degree in English from UCLA.^[35] He moved to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia University's MFA Writing Program and New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts.^{[36][37][38][39]}

Art—painting in particular—is a talent Franco developed during his high school years while attending a rigorous summer school for the arts, California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA).^[1] Franco has said that painting was the "outlet" he needed in high school, and that he "has actually been painting longer than he has been acting."^[40] His paintings were displayed publicly for the first time at the Glü Gallery in Los Angeles, California from January 7, 2006 through February 11, 2006.^[1][41] Franco can also be seen painting in a scene in Spider-Man 3.^[42]

Filmography

Franco visits Palo Alto High School in November 2007

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

James Franco

• James Franco at the Internet Movie Database
• James Franco at Yahoo! Movies