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James Franco opens up in the June issue of Elle about childhood crushes, regrettable texts, and the male movie star he finds irresistible.
“[Marlon] Brando is inevitably sexy,” he tells the magazine. “When he’s completely uninhibited both with what he does and what he says, then he reveals a being full of intelligence who moves like a dancer and speaks like a poet.”
The “Of Mice and Men” actor also admits to having a childhood crush on “Winona Ryder in Heathers and everything she did in that era.”
“She was so cool as an outsider,” he explains. “The first freak and geek.”
The characters in his new film, Palo Alto, are suffering the pains of adolescence, and Franco, who plays a soccer coach, can relate to not fitting in.
“I wasn’t the best socializer,” he says of his high school years. “I was shy, but I had a girlfriend named Jasmine my last two years.”
“I was lucky to have someone who stuck around like that,” he adds. “I was a little confused and mixed-up when it came to dating.”
Franco’s teenage girlfriend inadvertently pushed him into acting. He auditioned for the school play only after learning she would have to kiss another guy on stage.
“Half of that jealousy had to do with somebody doing a romantic play with my girlfriend. But also, that guy was doing what I wanted to do,” he explains. “He wrote the play, he acted in it, he directed it. I was probably more upset that he was doing that and I wasn’t.”
Now that he’s a writer as well as an actor, Franco says he could fall for a woman who didn’t love his work.
“It’s not all of me. [Laughs] Yeah. It’s fine.”
When it comes to romance, Franco sees the positives and the negatives of building a relationship in the digital age.
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“You can get to know someone much quicker,” he says. “The downside is when people aren’t tech savvy and don’t express themselves well through digital media.”
