James Franco: Keeping it Real

After Spider-Man, there must have been a ton of scripts coming his way, and he must be at the point where he can pick and choose. "Recently I've been offered a lot of movies, but I've turned a lot down. I'm not against commercial movies, but I want something of substance."

I ask him if he thinks Spider-Man was a film of substance. I'm not being facetious, I'm just curious how he defines substance. "It was in its own way," he says. "The director and the actors certainly have substance. It's not the deepest movie, but there's something that resonates. It's one of the American myths. Every comic book was spawned out of Superman. [Michael Chabon's] novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier & Clay shows how everything was and is the alter ego. There are so many elements of Superman in almost every superhero. Spider-Man comes out of that: he's the masked superhero, he has an alter ego that is not as dashing as his superhero persona. And the Green Goblin is in many ways similar to The Joker [in Batman], the half-mad cackling villain."

Unlike most biomovies, James Dean was a film of substance. Franco's portrayal of the late actor was full of originality, sensitivity and little tics that made his Dean unique. Franco ripped down that heartthrob image and went deeper, exposing a disturbed, scarred young man. It was clear that Franco was diving off the deep end with his performance. It must have felt scary. "It was very scary," says Franco. "Nobody was pushing me into it--in fact, most people asked me what I was doing. I knew it was a responsibility and that I'd be under heavy scrutiny."

Franco says what convinced him to take the challenging assignment in the first place was that Mark Rydell was directing. "He knew the time and the themes," he says. "Many of his previous movies had the theme of contending father and son, troubled relations, so he understood that. He gave me safety, and never questioned my trying to be in character all the time. Dean was like this live nerve, he could bring so much of his own feelings to the part. I tried to emulate that dedication."

That dedication led Franco to isolate himself for four months from his friends, family and girlfriend, Maria Sokoloff (whom he met three years ago on the teen flick Whatever It Takes), under the advice of his acting teacher, Robert Carnegie.

"Dean was a very emotionally isolated person," says Franco. "He lost his mother, his father turned him away, he was pretty lonely after that. I've always had a very supportive family and group of friends, so I just wanted to approximate what Dean was going through emotionally. I wanted to feel what it was like not to have that. It was hard, especially between Maria and I. After it was over she could appreciate it."

Is he considering tying the knot and starting a family with Maria, who currently plays a secretary on "The Practice"? "Nah," Franco says with a turn of his head.

Have women been throwing themselves at him since Spider-Man came out? "It hasn't happened," he insists. "Though people do recognize me more often now."

Who among his peers does he admire? "Benicio Del Toro, Jeffrey Wright. I really like Paul Bettany, who played the imaginary friend in A Beautiful Mind. When I was a kid, I loved Balthazar Getty in Lord of the Flies."

What was his experience like on City by the Sea, in which Robert De Niro plays his father? "Before my audition with De Niro, I couldn't sleep all night," Franco says. "But, surprisingly, he was the most mild-mannered and quiet guy that I'd met in a while. So the audition was easy and not intimidating. On the set, I would go every day to watch him work, because he's a hero of mine. He was very reserved. So I became comfortable being around him. Though there were a couple of times when we were acting together and I'd think to myself, 'Wow, it's De Niro!'"

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