The hair is really a way to push me even farther out of just what people know me for. I don't really know what people know me for.

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

Sometimes I get a little sad, and I feel like being alone. Then I talk to my cat about it, and he reminds me I’m James Franco. Then we dance.

In any creative endeavor, you do have to sort of take your shots. Nobody is going to beg you to go into the creative arts. So, if you want to pursue a career in something like acting or writing, the motor and the drive have to come from you. And that does take courage because, A, a lot of people want to do it, and B, it's hard. So, you have to have the guts to put yourself out there and go for it in spite of the world saying, "You know, it would be so much easier, if you didn't pursue this." So, it does take guts.

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

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.