James Franco

James Edward Franco was born on April 19, 1978, in Palo Alto, California, where he grew up alongside his two younger brothers, Tom and Dave, both of whom also became actors. His father, Douglas Eugene Franco (1948–2011), operated a Silicon Valley business and was of Portuguese and Swedish descent, while his mother, Betsy Lou (née Verne; born 1947), is a children's book author and occasional actress from a Russian Jewish family. Franco's maternal grandfather changed the family surname from Verovitz to Verne after 1940, and his maternal grandmother, Mitzie, owned the Verne Art Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, and was active in the National Council of Jewish Women. His paternal grandmother, Marjorie, published young adult books. Franco has described his upbringing as academic, liberal, and largely secular.

Franco graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1996, having participated in theatrical productions there, and attended the California State Summer School for the Arts in 1998 for theater studies. He enrolled at UCLA as an English major but left after his first year to pursue acting, choosing instead to train with Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West. During this period he worked overnight shifts at McDonald's to support himself, an experience he later reflected on in a 2015 Washington Post editorial. He had previously interned at Lockheed Martin and demonstrated strong academic aptitude, though his high school years also included arrests for underage drinking, graffiti, and theft, which briefly made him a ward of the state before a judge offered him a second chance.

After fifteen months of training, Franco began auditioning professionally in Los Angeles. His first significant television opportunity came in 1999 when he was cast as Daniel Desario on the NBC ensemble comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks, which ran for eighteen episodes before cancellation due to low viewership. The series later developed a substantial cult following. Franco went on to portray the title character in the 2001 television biographical film James Dean, directed by Mark Rydell, for which he underwent extensive preparation — learning to ride a motorcycle, play guitar and bongos, bleaching his hair, and cutting off contact with family and friends to inhabit the role. The performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film, along with nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Franco reached wide international recognition in 2002 when he appeared as Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, reprising the role across the trilogy through 2007. His film work expanded considerably over the following decade, encompassing Milk (2008), Pineapple Express (2008), 127 Hours (2010) — for which he received a Best Actor nomination at the 83rd Academy Awards — Eat Pray Love (2010), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Spring Breakers (2012), and Oz the Great and Powerful (2013). He collaborated repeatedly with actor Seth Rogen on Pineapple Express, This Is the End (2013), The Interview (2014), Sausage Party (2016), and The Disaster Artist (2017), the last of which brought him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

On television, Franco held a recurring role on the daytime soap opera General Hospital between 2009 and 2012, starred in the limited series 11.22.63 in 2016, and led the David Simon-created HBO drama The Deuce from 2017 to 2019.

In 2014, Franco made his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of Of Mice and Men. That same year, a seventeen-year-old girl publicly shared screenshots of messages she alleged were exchanged between herself and Franco, in which he, then thirty-five, attempted to arrange a meeting at a hotel after she disclosed her age. In 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported that five women had accused Franco of inappropriate or sexually exploitative conduct in the context of his work as an acting teacher or mentor. A lawsuit brought by former students alleged sexual harassment and fraud and was settled in 2021 for $2.2 million.