James Franco reveals sex addiction in first sit-down interview for four years

James Franco finally addresses the multiple sexual misconduct allegations against him in a shocking new interview.

James Franco admits he was addicted to sex and “completely blind to people’s feelings” in his first sit-down interview in nearly four years.

“I [was] completely blind to power dynamics or anything like that … I didn’t wanna hurt people,” the actor — who was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in 2018 — said on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show Tuesday, Page Six reports.

And he also confessed to having sex with students at his acting school, Studio 4, more than two years after they accused him of sexual exploitation.

“Look, I’ll admit I did sleep with students. I didn’t sleep with anybody in [my ‘Sex Scenes’ class], but, over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students and that was wrong,” Franco, 43, explained to Cagle.

“Look, I’ll admit I did sleep with students.” Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

“But like I said, I, it’s not why I started the school and I, I didn’t, I wasn’t the person that selected the people to be in the class. So it wasn’t a master plan on my part. But yes, there were certain instances where, you know what I was in a consensual thing with, with a student and I shouldn’t have been.”

Ex-students Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles County Superior Court in October 2019, claiming Franco and other instructors pressured women to get naked for auditions while dangling opportunities for movie roles that rarely materialized.

Franco, 43, said in the new interview his issues spiralled out of control when he found he “could never be faithful to anybody” — that is, until he met current girlfriend Isabel Pakzad.

James Franco: “I cheated on everyone.” Picture: AFP

“I cheated on everyone before Isabel,” he confessed.

Franco, who has been vocal about his struggles with alcohol addiction in the past, noted in the new interview that an alcohol abuse sponsor once encouraged him to remain single and just hook up. The actor said he “ran with” the advice at the time, and “used it as an excuse to, you know, just hook up all over the place.”

“And I, in fact, I wasn’t like really a one-night-stand guy,” Franco explained. “Like people that I, you know, got together with or dated, like I’d see them for a long time, years. It’s just that I couldn’t be present for any of them. And the behaviour spun out to a point where it was like I was hurting everybody.”

Franco said the attention he received from the women he dated was “such a powerful drug” that he got “hooked on it for 20 more years.”

Things didn’t change until his sister-in-law Iris Torres — who is married to Tom Franco — gave him a book on sex and love addiction. He said it hit him “like a bullet” and he thought, “Oh my God, that’s me.”

Franco says his issue is sex addiction. Picture: AP

Sarah Tither-Kaplan, one accuser who sued Franco.

Franco did not specify when exactly he came to this realisation.

“Up until that point, like as crazy as it is, like I had inklings like, ‘OK, maybe this is an issue,’” Franco shared, also stating that he realised, “Oh, this is an issue that I’m not gonna solve on my own.”

By doing “a lot of the work” over the past four years, he said, he has learned that he always struggled with addiction issues, but they had just manifested themselves in a different way.

“I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and, and changing who I was,” he said.

Franco battled alcohol addiction as a teen, but got sober at 17, and once he “couldn’t use alcohol to sort of fill that hole,” he sought “success, attention.”

“And so in a weird way, I got addicted to validation, I guess, or success, or whatever that is,” he added.

“The problem with that is like, I’m sure you can guess, like any sort of drug or anything, like, there’s never enough … And it was, it was never-ending.”

Back in June, Franco settled a sexual misconduct lawsuit for $US2,235,000 after he and business partner Vince Jolivette were accused of engaging “in widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behaviour towards female students by sexualising their power as a teacher and an employer by dangling the opportunity for roles in their projects” at the acting school the pair once operated.

In addition to being accused of sexual misconduct by five women in 2018, the Disaster Artist star also previously made headlines for trying to arrange a meet-up with a 17-year-old girl at a New York hotel in 2014.

After the scandal broke, Franco admitted the messages were legitimate and apologised, saying he was “embarrassed” and had “used bad judgment.”

Franco told Cagle he did not speak out until now because it “did not seem like the right time to say anything.”

“There were people that were upset with me, and I needed to listen,” he added.

This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as James Franco reveals sex addiction in first sit-down interview for four years