Hey, Blog Readers!
Just like all of you, everyone here at Everything Summer Camp has their own favorites of musicians, movie stars, and other celebrities among the many in the modern day biz. And just like all of you, all of the celebrities we feature on our Summer Camp Celebrity blog posts at some point went to summer camp.
Today’s post will be the third summer camp celebrity blog post we’ve published. The last summer camp celebrity that we talked about was the spritely actress/musician Zooey Deschanel; and before her post, we talked about the delightful Anne Hathaway.
Today we’re talking about the one, the only, the magnificent, James Franco who attended a four-week summer program for gifted high-schoolers at Innerspark: California State Summer School for the Arts. This summer program studies the art of Theater, along with Animation, Dance, Film, Music, Visual Arts, and—my own, personal favorite—Creative Writing.
James continued to pursue his passion after his summer camp experience and spent 15 months training to be an actor. He then plugged away in Los Angeles, auditioning for parts and yielding minimal results for two years before landing work on the cult classic television series Freaks and Geek in 1999.
Two years after Freaks and Geeks which only lasted one season, James was cast to play James Dean in a biographical, made-for-TV movie. For this part, Franco really studied James Dean. He took the role so seriously the he learned to ride a motorcycle, and learned to play the guitar as well as the bongos just to better understand his character. It’s no surprise he won a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal.
With many other films along the way, James landed himself the part of Harry Osborn, the child of the evil Green Goblin in the superhero movie, Spider-Man. He then continued the role in the following, extremely (and increasingly) successful sequels in 2004 and again in 2007.
Mr. Franco continues to remain busy with his work as he is currently starring as the wizard in the Disney prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful.
A good start in summer camp, patience, and determination is all it took for James Franco. What will it take for you? And, as always, thanks for reading.
- John