James Franco, an Oscar nominee, has admitted to sleeping with students at an acting school he used to run, claiming he had a sex addiction, and has worked to modify his conduct in recent years.
In excerpts from 'The Jess Cagle Podcast' made public on Wednesday, Franco, 43, said that while teaching, he “did sleep with students, and that was wrong.” He said he did not begin the school to attract women for sexual purposes.
“I suppose at the time, my thinking was if it’s consensual, okay,” he added in the podcast. “At the time I was not clearheaded.”
Franco's statements were his first prolonged response to allegations filed against him nearly four years ago when the Los Angeles Times reported that five women had accused Franco of inappropriate behaviour.
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Later, in October 2019, two women filed a civil suit against the “Pineapple Express” star, accusing him of taking advantage of aspiring actors at his now-defunct acting school and duping young women into filming graphic sex sequences.
Franco said that he acquired a sex addiction after overcoming an alcohol addiction that he had developed at an early age. “It’s such a powerful drug,” he said. “I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time.”
Franco co-hosted the Oscars in 2011 and was nominated for his role in "127 Hours" in the 2012 ceremony.
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According to records filed in Los Angeles Superior Court this year, the actor agreed to pay $2.2 million to resolve the civil action brought in 2019.
Franco also revealed in the podcast interview that he has been in treatment from sex addiction since 2016 and that since the claims against him, he has "been doing a lot of work" and "changing who I was."
“I didn’t want to hurt people,” he said.
