Issue Date: August 5, 2001

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Becoming James Dean

Actor James Franco is a rebel with a cause: to accurately, honestly portray one of the greatest, and most tormented, of Hollywood icons.

By Jeffrey Zaslow

For three months last year, actor James Franco separated himself from the people he loved. He had little or no contact with his parents, his friends or his girlfriend, Marla Sokoloff of TV's "The Practice." He isolated himself, he says, to understand the "pervasive loneliness" that defined the life of James Dean.

In "James Dean," airing Sunday on TNT, Franco offers a vividly melancholy portrayal of a tormented young man. Franco "cut himself off from everyone to feel genuinely lonely during filming," says the movie's director, Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond). "He risked relationships for the role. That's a big sacrifice, to cut yourself off from those who love you. They weren't OK with it. He almost lost his girlfriend. But he did it anyway."

Franco, best known as the soulful hood in TV's "Freaks and Geeks," went even further to get into Dean's skin. He took up Dean's two-pack-a-day smoking habit. And having read that Dean was called "the human ashtray" because he'd purposely burn his arms with cigarettes, Franco says he tried that, too.

"Growing up, I knew this sensitive, confused, troubled kid, and his arm was polka-dotted from cigarette burns," recalls Franco, 23. "I always thought he was like James Dean. I don't know if Dean really did burn himself, but I thought I'd try it. I did a lot of weird stuff to help me get into the role."

Dean died at age 24 in a 1955 car crash, and rose to icon status on the strength of a 16-month Hollywood career that produced just three films. "Rebel Without a Cause," "East of Eden" and "Giant" still resonate with young audiences. But Franco says the generational issues they reflect do not apply today. On film, Dean personified the angst of a generation that often felt powerless and ignored by parents. "Teens today rule the world," Franco says. "The whole culture -- movies, music -- is pointed at young people. They have so 'much' power."

Franco has benefited from this focus on youth, making movies like "Whatever It Takes," a high school retelling of the Cyrano de Bergerac story that co-starred Sokoloff. Up next: He plays Robert De Niro's son in "City by the Sea" and the best friend of Peter Parker, Spider-Man's alter ego, in "Spider-Man".

The actor spends his free time painting with oils and acrylics. He wooed Sokoloff by giving her his portrait of the goddess Venus. "We got in a fight and she destroyed it. I forgive her. I just haven't given her any more paintings since then."

Franco was born in Palo Alto, Calif., to aspiring artists. His late grandfather was a cartoonist, and grandmother Mitzie Verne runs a Japanese art gallery in Cleveland. Franco calls his grandmother a great influence. "She took me to Japan to meet artists there. One even invited me to live with him for a year. I didn't, and now I regret it."

Instead, he majored in English at UCLA. Then, against his parents' wishes, he dropped out to study acting. "They had ideas of how I should proceed in life. I was confused. I still felt obligated to my parents' wishes." They told him that if he quit school he'd have to support himself, so he got a job at McDonald's. He worked on his acting skills by practicing accents on drive-through customers.

Now that he's a rising star, of course, his family couldn't be prouder.

His grandmother tells of meeting him recently in New York. They ate dinner, then he took her to Times Square. "We walked over together, holding hands," says Verne, "and there he was, blown up on a billboard as James Dean. We could feel this electricity just standing there hand in hand."

That feeling was the jolt of fame, but Franco says he learned lessons about stardom while researching Dean's life. "As his career in Hollywood progressed, he became more of a brat. A lot of his antics were written off because he was a star, but eventually it would have caught up with him."

Franco spoke with old friends of Dean, including Liz Sheridan, who played Jerry Seinfeld's mother on "Seinfeld". "She had a relationship with him and saw the vulnerable side beneath the bravado. But a few other people seemed to have bitter memories. They are spoiled on the whole James Dean legend."

Watching Franco so brutally immerse himself in Dean's life suggested to director Rydell that the words "tortured" and "artist" are sometimes synonymous. "Think about the great actors," he says. "Monty Clift, James Dean, Marlon Brando. They're not your average next-door neighbor. Neither is James Franco. What he did to get into this role is visible onscreen."

Contributing Editor Jeffrey Zaslow last profiled pop star Mandy Moore.
Photo by LANCE STAEDLTER, TNT