James Franco Quotes

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

Life as a performance is just a way to look at life choices as character choices. Every morning you choose what to wear, you choose how to wear your hair, you choose your friends, you more or less choose your profession, and how hard you will work at it. Those are all things that an actor decides about his character when he is performing, and they are things that we decide in life. We create our "character."

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.

The new critique you're gonna start hearing about James Franco, is 'He's spreading himself too thin.'

The first piece of art that I ever bought - when I could afford it - was a Warhol sketch from the period when he was just getting out of doing commercial work and more into art. It's a sketch of a young guy's face. I guess the gallery that I bought it from thought I would like it because the young guy kind of looked like James Dean.

When I started writing after my career as an actor, I knew that that other life in the film industry would be pulled into my writing life and that people would see me not as an author but as an actor starting to write.

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

I'm a big cardigan sweater guy.

In a movie, a book, or a play, a character doesn't live in a vacuum. She is subject to pressures from the world outside of her, just like we are in life. These pressures and circumstances shape character. Who your parents are determines your genetic make up: your skin color, your sex, your height, weight. Where you are raised does affect your worldview either positively or negatively, your accent. Your economic class affects where you go to school, what you eat, where you sleep.

You don't really prepare for a kissing scene.

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

Boys and girls were both created with given attributes, and given the freedom to act and react. But Adam was allowed to name all the animals, and Eve was made from Adam's rib, as a companion for him. No wonder she ate the apple, she was rebelling against a world where everything was stacked against her. She was just a prop to make Adam happy.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I put out a lot of different kinds of material, and maybe people read that as egotistical. Or maybe, since a lot of it does involve some aspect of me, they find it self-aggrandizing. But there’s a long tradition of artists using themselves. Look, I know I’m not perfect. And, who knows, maybe a part of it has to do with self-obsession. But it’s also about using this weird thing that is a public persona as raw material for creative projects.

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

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.

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.

You want to be interesting? Be interested.

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.

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

Generally you don't initiate the projects - they're designed and you're inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.

They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.

I loved the world of Oz. I guess as a young man, I was just drawn to fantasy worlds. I liked being transported to alternative realms where a lot of my early imagination was sparked.

I wanted to do serious movies. I had a certain idea of what good acting was. That's since changed, and I love doing comedies now. I don't like a lot of those movies now, but I thought those were movies that I could do real, serious performances in.

It's basically the best job in the world. If you're fortunate enough - and I consider myself fortunate - you get to work with your friends and you get to work on projects that interest you.

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.

I hate being an actor, they dress you and put on your makeup and you just feel like a little baby.

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

I always see nice images like that but I don't know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.

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

It's like low-budget filmmaking - a focus on dialogue and relationships over plot. Quirky. Improv.

I view filmmaking as a director's medium.

For some reason, when I was in junior high school, my friends and I had, like, a cologne-stealing ring.

It feels really sad, to me, to go to a dark bedroom. It's like surrendering to the night or something.

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

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.

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 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.