James Franco, 37, may actually be the hardest working man in Hollywood. He's so hard-working that, in a recent interview, one of his co-workers even began to question his sanity.
In the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, Franco discusses the ups and downs of his career and what an average day in his life is like. The actor is much more than an actor. Franco now wears several hats - director, artist, screenplay writer, professor, student, fiction and poetry writer and founder of a rock band called Daddy.
The Pineapple Express star has so much going on at once that one of his co-stars - who remains unnamed - seemed rather concerned about the star. "The real question when it comes to Franco isn't whether or not he's legit. He's legit. It's whether or not he's insane," she told Rolling Stone.
Due to being overworked, he admits in an interview to getting a 'D' in acting classes and falling asleep in class.
On the set of films like Your Highness, it was a normal sight to see Franco writing papers at 5 a.m., or flying out to take tests and returning the next day, even listening to taped lectures in his makeup chair.
Franco credits his "need to do a lot" to his father, who died of a heart attack in 2011.
"I think I get a lot from my dad, because he worked in Silicon Valley, but he always had these side projects. He would do math problems that would take years to figure out. And he'd do these weird science experiments in our backyard; they were like alchemy, in a way – he had this theory that there was gold running through the rivers, and if he figured out how to collect it, he could put it together. He never figured it out, but I remember all these little Tupperware buckets of river water in our backyard, with strainers in them, and they were his experiments."
Aside from having a need to be busy like his father, Franco also listed two other reasons that he isn't a one-project kind of guy. He finds fault in working on one movie every two or three years.
"You don't get to work as much, and I love working," he said, "and so much pressure is then put on that project."
There is a method to Franco's madness and it seems to be working in his favor. After all, he was nominated for an Oscar for his work in 127 Hours while he was also working on General Hospital. In 2011, he also completed his master's degree at NYU, was enrolled at Yale and accepted into the Rhode Island School of Design.