Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent James Franco is tucked away in the corner of a five-star hotel lobby on Rome’s Via Veneto, sipping an Americano coffee.
Wearing a chocolate brown hoodie he proudly says he co-designed, the actor and filmmaker looks relaxed and flashes his signature smile.
He’s in the Eternal City for the Rome Film Festival launch of Italian director Claudio Giovannesi’s “Hey Joe.” In the gritty drama, Franco plays Dean, an alcoholic American WWII vet who winds up back in Naples in the early ’70s in search of a son he fathered there before absconding to New Jersey.
The film is his first to surface on the fest circuit since his career went on hiatus following a now-settled 2019 lawsuit alleging that he sexually exploited young women who took his acting class.
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