James Franco Quotes

Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.

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.

I am very grateful for my life. I think one of the keys to not being depressed is to find gratitude and to be grateful for what you have. So I am grateful for what I have.

I learned a lot of good things in my school. I've audited a lot of other schools, and I guess after a while I got a little tired of the acting school atmosphere.

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.

Anyone has outside influences. They are the results of the cosmic roll of the dice: this person is born Aragon the Ranger, this person is born a prisoner in North Korea, this person is born Carlos the Dwarf. Some of these things are out of our control, but that doesn't mean that they can't be changed. A character, just like a person in real life, is a summation of her actions and feelings. Our actions and emotions are not performed against nothing, they do not arise from dust, we are in constant friction, and/or flow with our surroundings.

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.

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

Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.

You're a white male living in America, brought up in one of the richest cities in the county, Palo Alto. You went to high school with Steve Jobs' daughter, and your journalism teacher is the mother-in-law of Sergey, co-founder of Google.

You take advantage of your position as a famous actor to meet women.

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.

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.

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.

"The Wolfpack" is a real life clash of life and fiction and the saving power of brotherhood and make-believe.

Men in your position have women offering themselves in the hopes that they will get somewhere professionally, or socially.

When I was a young actor, I just didn’t understand how to function in this business as an artist. It is a business, it’s called the film business for a reason, there’s money involved ... But on the flip side, now I do not let the business side of it rule either. It’s a balance.

I only work with people I trust and respect.

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.

When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I had really bad buck teeth. 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.

Dreams and expectations also have the very dark flipside of disappointment, broken dreams.

I wouldn't want to live life in an untroubled garden, blissful and ignorant. I would want to get out into the world, and be a part of something. In a way I was born into the Garden of Eden, or as close as you can get in our world; I was born white, male, and in Palo Alto. I had it pretty kush.

I've decided I can't really control people's perceptions of me. All I can do is decide on what I work on and how hard I work on it.

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.

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

Reviews about film acting are very... tricky, because movies are such a collaborative thing.

We fell in love last night. He's the coolest guy.

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.

I guess it's ironic. I just did the Gucci cologne ad, and I was the cologne thief in junior high.

I could have a sex change and become a woman, physically. But in some ways that isn't even necessary. Because we live in a time when real life, and virtual life are at parity. We are so used to being creators, and creating versions of ourselves, mainly online, and through our communication technology, that I could very well picture myself as a woman, and consider myself a woman, even if my body would be classified as a male body by a medical examiner.

I think as far as straight actors playing gay roles, "Brokeback Mountain" was a big breakthrough. I'm pretty sure when they were casting that movie that - I think the story is, like you know, 10 to 15 other actors turned it down.

I don't like sleeping in a bed.

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.

A director on a film really sets the tone of how people go about things, so everybody is happy to be at work and everybody does their best.

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

You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim.

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

I still don't like going to bed alone.

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

There's art on the show that's really bad - these cliché Abstract Expressionist gestural things. It's almost like extensions of my performance, because in the scene I'm really mad.

I was supposed to go out with this girl, but the plans mixed up because I was working late. So I went to her apartment with a flower. She was asleep, but I really wanted to see her. I figured I'd be like Romeo, and climbed up to her balcony and gave her a rose. She was very shocked. After that, it was over.

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.

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.

There's this phenomenon where people do like to announce movies that they think I'm doing that I'm not.

I don't even like to sleep - I feel as if there's too much to do.

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.

I felt, implicitly, or not so implicitly, that subjects about women and other races were out of my jurisdiction as a creator. That if I moved too far from my own experience, and my own established identity, I would be criticized for taking even more of those wedding pies from others.

The wind came in languid gusts like whispered reminders.