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movie news
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Thu. 10 01. 2009 3:15 PM EDT
James Franco To Appear On ... 'General Hospital'?
The actor is set to play a mysterious character on the daytime soap over a two-month period.
by
Larry Carroll
James Franco
(
Steve Granitz/ Getty Images
)
Over the last several years, films like "Pineapple Express" and the "Spider-Man" series have made him one of the most in-demand movie stars in the business — now James Franco is making an unusual move by setting his next role in ... "General
Hospital"?
The 31-year-old actor has signed on to play a mysterious character on the 46-year-old ABC soap opera, in a story arc that begins November 20 — the same time as TV's all-important sweeps period. Franco's recurring role on the daily soap is expected to last for two months.
The move is a bit of a head-scratcher for several reasons, the most obvious being that Franco's film career has never been hotter than it is right now, coming off the back-to-back blockbusters "Pineapple Express" and Oscar-nominated "Milk." Typically, actors like Brad Pitt, Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore learn their craft in the rapidly shot, delightfully over-the-top realm of daytime TV before achieving movie-star success, then never look back. Now, after nearly a decade of working his way up on everything from "Freaks and Geeks" to "Deuces Wild" to "Tristan and Isolde," Franco is seemingly reinventing the process.
"It's an honor that an actor of Franco's caliber would choose to spend some of his valuable time in Port Charles," Executive Producer Jill Farren Phelps told "USA Today," commenting on the biggest star to visit her soap's fictional town in some time.
It isn't the first time that Franco, who broke through playing James Dean in a 2001 TV biopic, has bucked the typical Hollywood route to superstardom. After dropping out of UCLA in the mid-'90s, he returned to receive his undergraduate degree in English in 2008, following the establishment of his career. Subsequently, Franco moved to New York, where he has since been attending graduate school at Columbia University's MFA Writing Program and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he is studying filmmaking.
This report is from MTV News.
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