James Franco has a unique take on those gay rumors that seem to follow around almost every male actor in Hollywood who isn’t constantly boning a Victoria’s Secret model. He was inspired by a professor at Yale who had a different outlook on his sexuality and realized it was more about being unique as a person than actually being homosexual:
“One of my professors at Yale… had been a 19th-century- literature scholar. But as soon as he brought his queer life into that world, it gave him this energy and a realization: It wasn’t about being gay but about being different. And that gave me a feeling of enormous permission.”
Commenting on being criticized for his work, James says that his work is “all he has” and that the reception isn’t something that you can possibly influence so you have just understand the process without taking it to heart which takes time to get to grips with:
All you have is what you work on and how hard you work on it. As far as the results or the reception, it’s out of your hands. That’s something I really had to come to understand.”
On trying out different careers, James says he has to expand in order to keep himself motivated:
“…I’d become incredibly frustrated staying in the lines of my job description as an actor. I was making it hard, not only on everyone else, but on myself as well.”
