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.
Franco, 43, said his issues spiraled out of control when he found he “could never be faithful to anybody” — that is, until he met current girlfriend Isabel Pakzad.
“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,” the “Spring Breakers” star 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 behavior 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 did not specify when exactly he came to this realization.
“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 realized, “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, the “Pineapple Express” star 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 $2,235,000 after he and business partner Vince Jolivette were accused of engaging “in widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behavior towards female students by sexualizing 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” director 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 apologized, 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.