190 GQ.COM.AU SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017
Franco says it freely now: he was a workaholic. But part of
the reason he didn’t realise it sooner is that no one ever really
thought it was a problem. All of the projects and side projects
were just Franco being Franco. That’s just what he did – until
he reached a point where he couldn’t keep it up any longer.
“The thing about work addiction is our culture supports
it,” he says. “We reward hard work and success. But it can
really mask addictive, escapist behaviour.
“I’ve never done heroin in my life, but I imagine if you get
off heroin, people talk about facing reality, all these feelings
coming back. Whether you know it or not, you want to bury
them with the drug. And when you’re turning to things outside
yourself to fill yourself, there’s never going to be enough.
“I’m still just dealing with all of it, but with addiction, a lot
of it comes down to ego. And in Hollywood that might even
be more dangerous because the mirror that reflects your ego
back is like 100 miles wide in Hollywood.”
There’s also the fact that being busy was not just what
Franco did – it was who he was. More than just a guy who
did a million different things, that was his persona. People
expected him to live up to it. It was all part of the Franco
mythology he’d gradually built up over the last 20 years.
“Every interview I gave, people would tell me, ‘You’re
known for doing all these things, are you a workaholic?’ And
what I would hear was, ‘That means you work really hard.
You work harder than anybody’.
“But in fact, being a workaholic means you’re addicted to
something. And what’s underneath addiction? It’s about
hiding from fear, from pain, it’s doing something to make
yourself feel better. That’s exactly what I was doing and I had to
really adjust my relationship to work. It’s really hard. I’m sure,
like anything you’re addicted to, letting that go is difficult
because it’s a coping mechanism to make you feel good.”
But there was another side to Franco’s persona. There was
also the kooky guy who’d post weird Instagram selfies, or
pen op-eds in the New York Times defending Shia LaBeouf’s
creative prowess. There was James Franco, the actor, but
there was also James Franco, the walking performance art
project. And what about the gay rumours? The is-he, isn’t-
he guessing game that Franco fuelled with his movie choices,
an interview in which he said he was “gay up until the point
of intercourse” and a book of poetry called Straight James /
Gay James, released last year.
“There was also a part of me that embraced that public
persona who was just whacky and hard to pin down,”
he admits. “So I had something to do with it. But that
persona also rose around me – it wasn’t as if I could just do
that all by myself.
“What I told myself at the time was that this public
persona is an entity that is me and that is not me. And
I wanted to have fun with it. But now that I’ve taken a step
back, I’m only engaging with projects that I really care
about. I’m not on social media, I’m not doing things just to
try them. You won’t find me hosting the Oscars on a whim.”
You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but Franco turns
40 next year. It’s a moment that made him realise that two
decades in the movie industry is a long time; he’d be lucky to
have two more.
“I’m at that point where I realise how valuable time is,” he
says. “I think that I’ll be happier if I spend it doing things
that I really love instead of spreading myself so thinly, doinga lot of things that I kind of care about, but not with my
whole heart.
“What I’m really conscious of is that I realise what a great
life I have, so I’m truly trying to be grateful. Forty is a big
milestone, but I feel like I went through my own version of
a midlife crisis – so I don’t think I’ll hit another one at 40.”
Franco’s last serious relationship was with Ahna O’Reilley,
best know for her role in The Help. They split in 2011, after
five years together. “She broke up with me,” he told Rolling
Stone last year. “There were lots of reasons. But one was that
I was so busy.”
That was six years ago. Is he looking to settle down?
“I’ll say this,” he says, choosing his words carefully for the
first time. “I was a person that was incapable of settling
down with anyone because I was so self-consumed before.
I was incapable of sharing my heart with anyone. I was so
scared to be vulnerable that I made myself busy every minute
of the day, so I had an excuse. But I didn’t realise until it
started to hurt enough.”T
here’s a podcast Franco has been
listening to recently. It’s about stars
from the golden age of Hollywood,
the good old days. But it made
Franco see that many of their stories
have a common thread beyond the
fame and money and glamour.
“All my heroes, from Elizabeth
Taylor to Montgomery Clift to
Humphrey Bogart – there is just so much wreckage in their
lives,” says Franco. “They were looking for romance to save
them or for work to save them, and as their careers faded – as
everyone’s inevitably does – they just became wrecks.
Alcoholics, drug addicts. Story after story.
“It made me realise I need to find some other way to feel
OK with myself outside of my work. I still love my work, but
it can’t be this thing I turn to for happiness. When I made
my happiness contingent on how I was doing professionally,
inevitably there are ebbs and flows in every career and when
things weren’t going well, I felt like shit.
“Then I have to act out in other ways to make myself
feel better. And when you’re turning to things
outside yourself to fill yourself, there’s never going to be
enough – you’ve got to do more and more things to escape.”
Franco has teamed up with brother Dave to form their
own production company, Ramona Films. Their first
feature, The Disaster Artist, is about the making of The Room,
widely recognised as the best worst movie of all time. It’s due
out later this year.
They are also developing a film called Zola, the true story
of a stripper who was lured into a sex-trafficking ring and
ends up live-tweeting from captivity. Granted, this might
sound like a project tailor-made for the whacky Franco of
old, but he’s quick to point out he’s changed his perspective.
“I have a whole new approach. I have slowed down,” he
says. “I thought that I was making my work better by
overworking, but after a while you realise there’s no more oil
in the car. You’re running on fumes, and you will burn out if
you keep going at this pace.
In 2013, Franco agreed to appear in Comedy Central’s Roast
of James Franco, as the likes of Seth Rogen... Continued p256