James Franco shares some pretty incredible acting tips for working and aspiring actors.
Franco opened up to Evening Standard Magazine about his decision to take a break from acting and live a more relaxed life after suffering what he calls a “midlife crisis.”
“I guess it’s called a midlife crisis. I’ve certainly hit a wall this past year,” he said. “It’s not like I went out and had to buy a Ferrari or anything like that. It was more about re-prioritizing and figuring out what was meaningful. I’ve been known as a guy that just did a lot of things.”
Franco is now using his time to figure out what he wants to do.
“I already went through a lot of phases I think people go through in their midlife crisis,” he said. “So for me it was really about cutting back and focusing, and figuring out what I really wanted to spend my time on.”
Franco’s latest project The Disaster Artist, which he directed and stars in, comes out later this year. He is also starring in the HBO series The Deuce playing two main roles.
“Workaholicism is a huge thing, and one of the problems is that it’s really hard to see, because hard work is applauded in our culture,” he said of his habit of taking on multiple projects at once. “As it should be, but I think there’s also a line, a very thin line, that I crossed over where there were diminishing returns on the amount of work I was putting in.”
Franco admitted that a number of projects he has signed up for have impacted the quality of his work.
“It was just ‘busy work’ after a while, an escape rather than a discipline that was adding up to better work,” he said.
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