Free Actors Anonymous by James Franco Page B

as me.
    I was a student at NYU (still am). I was raised in Windsor, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. I was a virgin through high school, but I hung out with punks and idiots and actors and did some stupid stuff anyway. My parents are from Croatia. Actually, I was born in Croatia and my parents had to put me in a bag and keep me quiet as they crossed the border to escape from the war. My father held his hand over my little mouth. So I was in Croatia for only a year. But I’m still Croatian. I go back to visit family: my grandmother, who I love,but she is also a typical Croatian woman, meaning she is dumb and does whatever my grandfather says.
    My mother is a nurse. She is also a typical Croatian woman and she lets my father say whatever he wants to me. He is the boss in the house, but I tell my mother
everything
. We have a close relationship. Now that I’m in New York, my mother texts me all day long. We talk every night. I told her, but not my father, when I had sex with James. Sometimes my mother is annoying and I get bratty in return, but I still love her so much. I just don’t want to become her.
    I want to be an actress like Meryl Streep. Or more like James Dean or Marlon Brando (I wish I was a boy sometimes). I don’t want to be a girly girl (sometimes I do), and I don’t want to be a Croatian bride. I want to be a punk rocker riot grrrl. I want to be able to show my pussy out loud. But I’m shy of my pussy. I’m afraid it smells. It doesn’t, and it’s not an ugly pussy, but I’m still shy of it. I’m prouder of my tits. I have perfect tits. I’m very comfortable with showing them. I’ve shown them in a bunch of James’s projects. But that was all later.
    My father drove a cab in Canada while getting his law degree. He worked very hard for me and my little brother. In Croatia he was a very successful lawyer, but he needed to pass the bar in Canada too. He yells a lot, but only because he’s passionate.
    My parents are supportive of me going to Tisch drama school, but only if I work hard and get good grades.
    Kurt Cobain is my god. He is the most beautiful man that ever lived. Except maybe James. I used to hang out with punks in Windsor. We’d go to this old abandoned house and have little concerts in the basement. Death metal type stuff. At NYU I had a band with my dormmates. We were called DaDa. I wanted to tag all the stop signs around NYU so it would say “STOP DaDa” everywhere. Like
Stop Daddy
. But also like the art movement. Chaos.
    My first month of being in New York, I lost my virginity. Just like Marlon Brando. He wrote about it in his autobiography,
Songs My Mother Taught Me
. Maybe I’ll have a book someday, or people will write about me.
    I kinda doubt it, I don’t know if I’m good enough at anything.
    Going to New York was the most exciting thing in my life. I signed up for all my classes. I was put in the Stella Adler program—NYU has different studios that students are assigned to for their four years: Stella, Strasberg, Musical Theater, the Atlantic Theater (David Mamet’s place), and Experimental Theater. I thought Stella was a good fit. It’s where Robert De Niro and Benicio Del Toro and Marlon Brando went (but when Stella was
alive,
oh well).
    One month after I got there, I was hanging in my dorm room one night (it’s in a big tower on 14th Street), and I got a text that James Franco was at the Starbucks near school. Me and this redheaded girl from acting class I was rehearsing with jumped in the elevators and ran the three blocks, giggling, to Starbucks. It was the wrong one. So we made our way over to the one near Washington Square Park, this time walking. As we walked, I told the redhead everything I loved about James and his work. After seeing
Freaks and Geeks,
I knew he was a kindred spirit (I was like the Freaks in high school), and after seeing him in
James Dean
I knew he was a genius. He was the actor I wanted to be like. I also watch a lot of cartoons and