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Actor’s best lesson was going back to school

AMY LONGSDORF For The Times Leader

James Franco will never forget his parents’ reaction when he told them he was quitting college to pursue acting.

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James Franco plays Scott Smith, San Francisco politician Harvey Milk’s longtime boyfriend, in ‘Milk.’

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“They were very upset because they felt I was being irresponsible and throwing my life away,” he recalls. “They were worried I wouldn’t be able to support myself.”

His parents need not have fretted. In less than a year, Franco landed a role as a bad-boy high-schooler in Judd Apatow’s TV series “Freaks and Geeks.” The series hit big with critics and led to Franco’s career-making turn as James Dean in the 2001 TNT biopic of the same name.

Playing Dean netted Franco a good deal of acclaim, including an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe win as well as a phone call of congratulations from his acting idol, Sean Penn.

Franco went on to ace the role of Spidey’s sidekick-turned-arch-enemy the Green Goblin in the “Spider-Man” movies. But when he tried to build on that success as a leading man in “Flyboys,” “The Great Raid,“ “Annapolis” and “Tristan & Isolde,” the results were unsatisfying.

So, eight years after dropping out of UCLA, Franco went back to school.

“I didn’t feel great about my career,” Franco, 30, says. “I was unhappy with a lot of performances that I had done. Acting was the only thing that I really had going in my life, so when I didn’t feel good about acting, I didn’t feel good about myself.

“I used to define myself with acting despite telling myself, ‘What they say about you -- or how well a movie performs -- doesn’t matter.’ But it did. I knew I needed to change my life in some way.”

Franco became a full-time student at UCLA three years ago. In May, he graduated with a degree in English literature. Ironically, hitting the books allowed Franco to shake off the pressures of being called Hollywood’s latest “It Boy.” No sooner did he stop obsessing about his career then a handful of juicy roles began to come his way.

Franco nailed the part of a dreamy stoner in the box-office hit “The Pineapple Express,” played Catherine Keener’s shifty boyfriend in “An American Crime,” nabbed a starring role in the upcoming adaptation of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and signed on for “Milk,” Gus Van Sant’s celebration of out-and-proud San Francisco politician Harvey Milk (Penn).

Based on an original screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, the biopic follows Milk as he becomes the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America. Milk would serve 11 months as a San Francisco city supervisor before being assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978, by rival politician Dan White (Josh Brolin).

“When I started out acting, I, of course, dreamed of working with Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn,” Franco says. “That’s the best situation an actor could ask for.”

In the film, Franco plays Scott Smith, Milk’s longtime boyfriend. Little has been written about Smith (who died in 1995) so Franco did his homework by interviewing friends of the couple and by screening footage of the documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk.”

Producer Dan Jinks believes “Milk” unveils a new side of Franco.

“I think audiences will be surprised by James in this role, which he plays so sensitively,” Jinks says. “Part of the emotional core of ‘Milk’ is the relationship between Scott and Harvey and how that affected Harvey’s political career.”

To help capture Smith’s adoration for Milk, Franco fed off his own respect for Penn. “It was an incredible experience working with Sean,” he says. “I’ve known him for a while and, for actors of my generation, he’s just the best. He’s always been someone that I can just call and get advice from. He’s also the kind of guy that if you’re in trouble, he’ll be there to help you work it out.

“Then, on set, it was just more of the same. He brought so much energy, dedication and devotion to this role. Everyone around him couldn’t help but bring the same kind of enthusiasm. Acting with him was surprisingly easy because it was so natural. Gus runs a very natural and relaxed set. So, you kind of just fall into the scenes.”

In between takes, Penn would regale Franco with stories about his Tinseltown exploits. “I got to act with Sean and then, while we’re waiting for the next setup, I’d get to hear, like, the best Hollywood stories ever,” he recalls.

As for sharing smooches with his old pal, Franco says it was a snap. “It was fine. And, yes, Sean’s a pretty good kisser.”

After Franco finishes promoting “Milk,” he’ll head back to New York’s Columbia University, where he’s enrolled in the school’s MFA writing program. He’s also studying film directing at Tisch School of Fine Arts in hopes of making his mainstream feature-film directorial debut a few years down the line. (He’s already directed shorts and indies).

“Being at Columbia puts me in an environment where people are interested in things that I’m interested in,” he says. “It’s hard to find a group of people that are going to seriously discuss literature, on a regular basis, outside of a university.”

Franco comes by his love of literature naturally. His mother, Betsy, is a children’s-book author who, like her son, is also interested in acting.

“She started taking acting classes recently, and her excuse was that it would help her write her characters better,” Franco says. “But she loved the class so much that she’s taken three more and started a comedy troupe in our hometown of Palo Alto called Suburban Squirrel.”

So what did Franco’s folks think about his recent graduation from UCLA more than a dozen years after his initial enrollment?

“They aren’t worried about my future anymore, so now they’re just happy when I’m happy,” he says. “But they came down to L.A. to see me graduate and took me out to dinner in Westwood. We were all sitting there, and my mom says, ‘You know what my dream is?’ I said, ‘No, Mom, what’s your dream?” She said, ‘I’d love to play a teeny, tiny role in one of your movies.’

“I thought it was so ironic that I finally graduated from UCLA and now she’s telling me that she wants to be an actress.”

Franco laughs. “I told her, ‘Mom, stay to school.’ ”