James Franco talks dirty about his new life, past addictions and porn

Cape Town – James Franco gets down and dirty about old addictions, new therapies and his new HBO porn drama The Deuce with OUT magazine.

In conversation with writer Edmund White the actor/director/writer/artist and the list goes on... revealed acting helped him overcome certain addictions when he was young.

“I have a very addictive personality. When I was a teenager I got over certain addictions, and that’s when I started acting, at age 17.”

But Franco admits that the industry wasn’t only positive. He confessed: “I really threw myself into it, and that became everything, to the point where I didn’t even socialise.

“And then after, like, 10 years of that, at age 27, I realised, ‘Man, I’m so depressed. On the surface my life seems pretty good—I have a career and everything—but I feel isolated and lonely.’”

After being in the industry for 22 years, James revealed he has now changed his life and is moving away from being so work-addicted with the help of therapy.

“I’ve started a new chapter of my life. I was very work-addicted, and addicted to other things - not substances, I got over that a long time ago - but I’ve recently changed my life, and this is part of my therapy.”

He added: “I’ve been learning to surf, and now I’m at the International Dance Academy on Hollywood Boulevard, about to take my hip-hop lesson.”

Franco and White also touch on the 39-year-old’s involvement in The Deuce, which delves into the gritty world of porn and prostitution in the 70s and 80s.

To put it in a nutshell the King Cobra actor – who plays twin brothers Vincent and Frankie - describes the series as “a show that really tracks how as streetwalkers the women needed pimps for protection, and were very dependent on them, and how that moved indoors, into the massage parlors, and the pimps started to become obsolete because the women didn’t need the same kind of protection because they weren’t outside anymore.”

Based on his involvement James says he only agreed to do the show if he could direct three episodes and he has directed the third and seventh episode so far.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW.