Actors Anonymous: A Novel by James Franco

Actors Anonymous: A Novel by James Franco

Now Nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album

The actors in James Franco's brilliant debut novel include a McDonald's drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers and Midwestern transplants; a vampire flick starlet who discovers a cryptic book written by a famous actor gone AWOL; and the ghost of River Phoenix. Then there's Franco himself, who prowls backstage, peering out between the lines--before taking the stage with fascinating meditations on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. Hollywood has always been a private club, he writes. I open the gates. I say welcome. I say, Look inside.

Told in a dizzying array of styles--from lyric essays and disarming testimonials to hilariously rambling text messages and ghostly footnotes--and loosely modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride into the dark heart of celebrity.

James Franco is a multi-talented actor, director, author, and artist. Milk, Pineapple Express, Howl, and 127 Hours are among his film credits, with the last earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His work has appeared in Esquire, Vanity Fair, N+1, The Wall Street Journal, and McSweeney's, and he is the author of the collection Palo Alto. Franco's work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art's PS1 in New York, the Clocktower Gallery in New York, and the Peres Projects in Berlin, among other places. He currently resides in New York City.