He seems to be freaking everywhere and in every single issue of an entertainment magazine. For a long time he was hailed as some sort of intellectual because he was also in college, though that seems to have petered out (at least one his professors famously said his film connections and deep pockets outweighed his academic achievements in the eyes of administration).
Yet amazingly, while he has many credits, he has relatively few memorable performances considering the degree of his fame and ubiquity of his exposure. I suppose 127 Hours was his high water mark.
Plus he’s committed the unforgivable sin of becoming less cute as he ages, and his worst enemy in this being his own younger brother whose hotness far eclipses his own.
So I think he currently the most overexposed actor.
Agree or disagree? And if disagree, who would you nominate as most overexposed?
Not sure about “overexposed” as such, but he’s overrated, and from what little I’ve seen of him in interviews and his roles, someone I would never want to be anywhere near if I could help it. Polar opposites in personality and interests. Same with Seth Rogen, and the rest of their so-called comedy contemporaries.
I would have to disagree. For overexposed I would say the two mentioned before, Cumberbatch and wahlberg first. I mean recently he was around because they had a movie coming out. A small movie without a lot of money pushing it. And then of course because it became big news.
I like James Franco. My favorite roles were as Allen Ginsberg in the movie Howl, and as the drug dealer Alien in Spring Breakers, for which he seriously deserved an Oscar nomination.
Actors act. It’s what they do. It’s their job. It’s their occupation. It’s their career. No actor is going to say “Oh, I’d better not take that role or some random person on the internet will complain that I’m working too much!” Franco has lots of different interests and irons in the fire, including teaching. I don’t believe that he was a slacker. From IMDB:
From Wikipedia:
He delves into a lot of different areas, many that don’t have anything to do with acting, but even as an actor, why shouldn’t he try a lot of different roles in a lot of different movies and shorts? He even put his movie career on hold to be on a soap opera just because he wanted to try it. Soap operas are more demanding than a lot of people give them credit for. He’s also directed several films. They were small indies and didn’t get wide distribution, but they were about topics he was interested in and he gained experience for future projects and his teaching courses.
Many of his smaller roles, roles in small indies and shorts, tend to be psychological in nature, it’s a subject he’s interested in, so why shouldn’t he take them? He also takes roles in LGBT-oriented films and shorts, Milk being the most famous, but only one of many.
I think he should be respected for his charity work, if nothing else. Taking on high-paying, higher-profile gigs every now and then helps with that, in bringing money and attention to them. Anyone who thinks that Franco is just in the business for the money and fame without giving back or using those things for good is dead wrong.
Anyway, if you’re sick of him now, you might as well just go live on a desert island, because he has over 20 upcoming projects. I’m most looking forward to Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert, with Nicole Kidman, another actor who went through her own “You’re overexposed, stop working so much” craziness. He also has Everything Will Be Fine, directed by Wim Winders, coming, and I can’t wait to see it.
But based on my recent experience of going to the movies and seeing approximately 23 trailers for upcoming movies of his, I would alternatively suggest Kevin Hart.
I’m too old to be thinking of any younger man as a “sexpot” (unless we’re talking Chris Hemsworth, who sets my inner 18-year old’s heart a-flutter), and he’s not my type (my husband is my type) but he’s attractive to me in a way that goes beyond his looks. I do think he’s cute (and still, even as he ages, cuter than his brother, who is also cute), but it’s the combination of intelligence, curiousity about many different topics, that ability to be both serious and totally goofy/playful, his often self-depreciating humor (come on, he was hilarious in This Is The End) and more, makes him very appealing.
Does any straight man ever get why any woman thinks another man is attractive?
Here’s an Open Letter to James Franco that to me is pretty dead on about why Franco is attractive. It’s from a gay man but I agree with most of it.
I love how he’s completely confident in his sexuality, whatever that may be. He doesn’t care what other people think. If he’s gay and people think he’s gay, no problem. If he’s straight and people think he’s gay, no problem. He loves to playfully tweak the tabloids. He thinks their obsession with “Is ____ Gay???” is ridiculous so he’ll deliberately post photos of himself bromancing another guy just to set them off.
I’m on my mobile and links are problematic, but this is a good piece that comes up if you Google James Franco Gay.
Did he come out just then? The beauty of it is, no one can be sure. People can think what they want to think and it makes no difference to him. He keeps his private life private yet fuels the rumor mill to make the speculation look silly. I love that!
