Hollywood actor James Franco has revealed that he did sleep with acting students at his Studio 4 acting school.
The actor addressed the sexual misconduct allegations on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. The allegations arose in 2018, where James was accused by five women, with his attorney denying all accusations at the time.
James said: “Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students and that was wrong.
“But…it’s not why I started the school and 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 a student and I shouldn’t have been.”
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
James settled a £1,673,568 lawsuit at Los Angeles’ Superior Court in February 2021 with two out of the five accusers and alleged victims, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal.
The two alleged that James had engaged 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 now closed acting school.
Claims from the two former students included that the actor had pushed his acting pupils to perform explicit scenes on camera.
The actor stressed that the alleged consensual relationships were not with anyone in his particular classes.
James went on to reveal that he has also been addicted to sex for 20 years.
He said: “It’s such a powerful drug.
“I got hooked on it for 20 more years, and the insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time. I went to meetings … I even tried to sponsor other people. And so in my head, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m sober. I’m living a spiritual life.'”
James has been recovering from sex addiction since 2016 and said to be working on himself to make changes following the allegations.
(Image: FilmMagic)
Claims also involved students at the time alleging they had been victims of fraud for paying for the acting school only to be sexually objectified and intimidated.
Addressing why he is talking about the allegations now, James said: “In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me, and at that moment I just thought, I’m gonna be quiet. I’m gonna be — I’m gonna pause.
“(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: “So I’ve just been doing a lot of work. And I guess I’m pretty confident in saying like, four years, you know? I was in recovery before for substance abuse. There were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction.”
During his bout of sexual addiction, James revealed that he had “cheated on everyone” before his current relationship.
(Image: GC Images)
The actor stated: “I didn’t want to hurt people. I wasn’t really a one-night-stand guy. People that I got together with or dated, 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.”
James went on to say in the Jess Cagle podcast that he decided to speak out today so that no one including his brother, actor Dave Franco, and former friend and co-star Seth Rogen, would not have to speak for him anymore.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
