James Franco Quotes

You have got to have an agent. It's a business. But I think there is a way to be artful and commercial at the same time.

Whoever said that artists shouldn't pay attention to their business was probably someone w/their hand in some artist's pocket.

I resisted the film business as long as I could, because of the big circus act and the amount of money that it costs to make films - I saw my father suffer through that.

I think, as a generation of British actors, we're becoming a bit soft and too manipulated by the business.

As an actor, you're in the hands of producers and directors. It's important to find out who you're working with.

Try to find the right balance of keeping things exciting and treating your audience with respect, and also treating yourself as an artist with respect.

I slowly came to realize that this job of being an actor, you spend most of your time looking for work. That is your job. Your job is auditioning. You spend very little of your time actually working.

We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.

The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

Working is the best way to understand and grow, as an actor, in my opinion. That's been my experience.

I always made a living as an actor when I came to California. I never had to do anything else.

If you were a painter and a rock and roll musi­cian and weren't established in either - to be an artist today you have to be as much a businessman to suc­ceed, you have to spend an equal amount of time doing business as you spend doing your craft.

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

The difficulty in working with someone on a show like Idol or X Factor is they have an idea of what they think is cool in their heads, and it's important as a producer to maintain control of the session and not let it get side-tracked or chase too many rabbits. But it's also important to let the artist feel like their opinion matters, so that balance is difficult.

The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.

The only way artists can do things is to do it for themselves. Trying to second guess what the public wants or likes is kind of a fool's game.

I don't approve of the John Waynes and the Gary Coopers saying "Shucks, I ain't no actor - I'm just a bridge builder or a gas station attendant." If they aren't actors, what the hell are they getting paid for? I have respect for my profession. I worked hard at it.

I think of myself as a serious artist. Sometimes you can get in your head too much about that and forget that you have to have fun. I've been guilty in my career about that at times. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I didn't want anybody else to have a hit with it!

As an actor, you're completely at the mercy of other people. You basically go begging for the opportunity to work. As a writer, at least nobody can tell me what to do. I can write what I want. I might not sell it, but at least I'm in control.

My experience with being on a record label over the years has been when both of your agendas are in sync, and they're the same goal, it's great to have another army of people and resources and money. But most of the time, they're not the same. Their agenda is just simply to sell plastic discs at any cost, and yours is to preserve - at least in my case - your integrity, and hopefully sell some plastic discs, too.

They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich.

A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.

I have very little interest in the bottom line or signing artists to help make the label profit. That's a lucky, unique position to be in, but it all comes out in the wash.

My oldest sister was an actress living in NYC by the time I was ten, and desperately wanted to be the one in charge of the words.