Background

Ethnicity: Dave's father was of half Portuguese and half Swedish descent, with his Portuguese roots being in the Madeira islands. Dave's mother is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Russia, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania).

Dave Franco was born on June 12, 1985, in Palo Alto, California, the United States. His mother, Betsy Lou (née Verne), is a writer and occasional actress, and his father, Douglas Eugene "Doug" Franco, ran a Silicon Valley business. Dave Franco’s parents, both painters, met at Stanford, where they studied art.

He grew up in California with his two brothers, Tom and James. Dave Franco comes from an extremely talented family with talents in many fields. His brother James is a talented movie actor, while his brother Tom is an actor and artist. His paternal grandmother is an author of young adult books, and his maternal grandmother was an active member of the National Council of Jewish Women and owned a prominent art gallery in Cleveland.

Education

Dave Franco wasn't always interested in acting, having concentrated on writing and poetry during high school. He graduated from Palo Alto High School in 2003. It wasn't until college when Franco showed an interest in being in front of cameras.

Dave Franco was studying at the University of Southern California when his elder brother James Franco’s manager pushed Dave towards acting and got him enrolled in a theatre class, where Dave learned the basics of acting. Initially, Dave wanted to be a writer, teach creative writing and make a career out of it. That was due to his closeness with his mother, who had several notable writing works to her name.

Franco chose not to complete his studies at the University of South California, where he had been studying for a degree in psychology. Although he dropped out of university, he returned 10 years later to complete his degree in English literature.

Career

Dave Franco made his television debut with CW drama series 7th Heaven for one episode, but his performance was impactful enough to get him two more shows Do Not Disturb and Young Justice. Franco has also been credited with playing roles in a number of big and small films such as Superbad, Charlie St. Cloud, 21 Jump Street, Warm Bodies, The Shortcut and Now You See Me.

In the 2008 CW teen drama TV show Privileged, he was cast as a major character which was although not regular but kept reappearing at regular intervals. Dave’s performance was, however, appreciated but the show couldn’t hold up and was eventually canceled by the network due to very low ratings.

Franco auditioned for the part of Edward Cullen, the lead role in the Twilight Saga series of films, and he even met with director Catherine Hardwicke. Five films were made between 2008 and 2012, all of which were a huge success. Unfortunately, Franco was not successful, and the part went to Robert Pattinson.

In 2009, Franco played the character of Cole Aaronson, a medical student in the long-running medical drama series Scrubs. He played a rich guy whose family paid a massive amount of money in order to get his son as an intern in the Sacred Heart Hospital. Franco appeared in the ninth and final season of the series and was seen in all the episodes, perfectly showing his acting chops for which he received wide acclaim.

In 2011, he was named as the Breakout star to watch out for by MTV Networks, and in the same year, Dave appeared in a horror movie Fright Night alongside industry biggie, Colin Farrell. The vampire horror film made about 4 million worldwide and Dave cemented his place as a bankable young actor in Hollywood.

In mid-2012, Dave, along with his brother James, was named among the 50 most skilled, talented, funny and gorgeous Jew men in the world and in the same year, he was seen in 21 Jump street as a drug dealer and a high school student. The film was a worldwide success and earned Dave a few award nominations.

In 2013, he starred in the adaptation of Warm Bodies, a Zombie romantic comedy film that follows the romance between a Zombie and a human. Later in the same year, he appeared in Now You See Me, a heist thriller having an ensemble cast featuring big names such as Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, and Jesse Eisenberg. Dave received acclaim for his role and went on to reprise his role in the sequel, which came out in 2016.

He featured alongside Seth Rogen in a 2014 comedy film Neighbours and made a guest appearance in 22 Jump Street, where he reprised his role from the previous installment. He also starred in Unfinished Business in the very same year. 2016 was a year of sequels for Dave and he reprised his roles in the second installments of Neighbours and Now You See Me.

Dave Franco also has worked in the 2016 thriller movie Nerve with Emma Roberts. Although he is best known for his work on television and in movies, Franco has had other acting gigs. One of these was appearing in the 2011 music video for Go Outside by Cults. In this video, he also appeared alongside Emma Roberts.

In 2017, Franco appeared in the well-received comedy The Little Hours, and the acclaimed biographical comedy-drama, The Disaster Artist, which was directed by his brother, James. In the latter film, he portrays Greg Sestero, a young actor who befriends the eccentric Tommy Wiseau and ultimately stars in Wiseau's film, The Room. He has also filmed a role in another film directed by his brother, Zeroville, in which he plays actor Montgomery Clift.

Dave is also focusing on his career as a writer and has said that he is in the process of writing screenplays His short film, called Would You, which he wrote and starred in, was accepted into the 2012 SXSW Film Festival.

Achievements

• 

  Dave Franco is a well-known American actor best known from Scrubs and 21 Jump Street. From the very beginning, Dave made it a point to not be in the movies with his brother until he made a name for himself separately.
  
  Franco received a Young Hollywood Award in 2013, and CinemaCon Award in 2016, for being a Breakthrough Performer of the Year.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Now You See Me

    (Four talented magicians mesmerize an international audien...)

    2013
  • The Broken Tower

    (From Focus World and director/star James Franco, the stor...)

    2011
  • If Beale Street Could Talk

    (From acclaimed director Barry Jenkins comes this timeless...)

    2018
  • The Little Hours

    (Italy, 1347: Bored, volatile nuns Alessandra (Alison Brie...)

    2017
  • The Lego Movie

    (The Lego Movie follows Emmet, who is on an epic quest to ...)

    2014
  • Unfinished Business

    (A routine business trip careens wildly out of control in ...)

    2015
  • Now You See Me 2

    (The Four Horsemen return for a second mind-bending advent...)

    2016
  • The Disaster Artist

    (The true-story of aspiring filmmaker and infamous Hollywo...)

    2017
  • Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

    (Mac and Kelly are forced to team up with their ex-neighbo...)

    2016
  • Neighbors

    (Seth Rogen, Zac Efron and Rose Byrne lead the cast of Nei...)

    2014
  • The Lego Ninjago Movie

    (A fierce but undisciplined team of modern-day ninjas must...)

    2017
  • Greenberg

    (Ben Stiller is Greenberg - single, fortyish and deliberat...)

    2010
  • Nerve

    (Partnered with a mysterious stranger (Dave Franco), a hig...)

    2016
  • Superbad

    (Determined to have sex before leaving for college, two te...)

    2007
  • Warm Bodies

    (An unlikely romance between a beautiful human teen and a ...)

    2013
  • After Sex

    (What do we talk about when sex is over? Meet eight couple...)

    2007
  • 21 Jump Street

    (Rookie cops Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum go undercover a...)

    2012
  • The Shortcut

    (Two brothers take a shortcut that is part of their hometo...)

    2009
  • Charlie St. Cloud

    (After surviving a car crash in which his brother dies, Ch...)

    2010
  • Zeroville

    (A young actor arrives in Hollywood in 1969 during a trans...)

    2019
  • Fright Night

    (All hell breaks loose when Jerry moves in next door!)

    2011

• TV series

  • Scrubs: The Complete Ninth Season

    (The heroes of Sacred Heart may have finished their rounds...)

    2010

Religion

Dave has stated that he is "proud" to be Jewish, which is his mother's faith and the way she raised him and his brothers, Tom and James.

Views

Quotations: "I just know that it's smart for my career to carve my own path and do my own thing."

"I don't just wanna be James Franco's little brother."

Personality

Dave Franco is his own biggest critic and he has analyzed his personality on many occasions. He describes himself as being shy growing up and as quite a serious adult. He has said that he is just not one of those people who is always joking and that he is definitely not a comedian. He also describes himself as a small, shifty type of guy. However, he does now feel that he is at a stage of his life where he can afford to let himself become a little goofy from time to time.

Although his mother loves his poems, Dave has admitted that he is ashamed of his writing skills. He writes simple words, then uses a thesaurus to locate the correct replacements.

Dave is a cat lover and says that there was never a point in his life when he didn’t have cats. He has two cats of his own; Arturo and Harry. The cats belonged to his brother James Franco until he moved to New York, and gave the two cats to Dave. He is keen to share his love for his cats with his fans as he posts photographs of his fur babies on social media. He has also spoken about them in interviews. He told Ellen DeGeneres that his cats fall asleep on him every night.

Interests

• Writers

  Roald Dahl, Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

• Artists

  Tom Franco

• Sport & Clubs

  football, skateboarding

• Music & Bands

  Bon Iver, Andrew Bird, The National, Noah and the Whale, Mumford & Sons

Connections

In 2011, Dave Franco met Scrubs actress Alison Brie through a mutual friend when they were attending the New Orleans Mardi Gras and the couple began to date. They announced their engagement in 2015 and their marriage was reported in October 2017 after they had married at a private wedding ceremony.

Father:

Douglas Eugene Franco

Mother:

Betsy Lou Franco

The first thing that Dave Franco spent money on when he started earning the big bucks was a gift for his mom. She had a very old-fashioned, 90s-style television in her living room that Franco described as looking like a big brick. So, Franco decided to treat her to a flat-screen television instead as soon as he began earning money.

Spouse:

Alison Brie

Although they have been together for many years and they are now happily married, Dave Franco and Alison Brie do not plan to start a family together. Brie thinks it is stressful enough having two cats and that the couple already considers them their babies. They cannot imagine how stressful it is to have a real child. Planning a pregnancy that fits in with both their busy schedules is another reason for their decision. Both their careers are going so well at the moment, and they want to concentrate on that. For now, Brie and France are quite happy to just hang out together at night.

colleague:

Emma Roberts

Brother:

James Franco

Dave is very close to his brother James. James has always been too protective of his younger brother ever since they were kids. When he was confused about his acting career, James helped Dave with a good manager, which played a huge role in Dave’s career.

While James and Dave move in a lot of the same circles to star in movies with the likes of Seth Rogen, neither of them actually shared any time on the set of a movie until 2017’s The Disaster Artist. Turning Tommy Wiseau’s “the best worst movie ever made” into a Hollywood affair was what finally brought Franco and Franco together.

Dave famously played Tommy’s best friend Greg Sestero alongside James’ unnervingly accurate turn as Wiseau. As to why it took them 32 years to work together, Dave said he wanted to carve his own path without just being known as the little brother of James Franco. It certainly worked: Dave manages to make a name for himself as an actor.

Brother:

Tom Franco

Franco’s brother Tom is an artist, and Dave is his biggest fan. Franco loves his brother’s art and has said that his apartment is littered with Tom’s creations. He has described the artworks as some of his most prized possessions and as the most meaningful objects he owns.

colleague:

Seth Rogen

colleague:

Brie Larson

colleague:

Imogen Poots

colleague:

Jesse Eisenberg

colleague:

Mark Ruffalo

colleague:

Woody Harrelson

colleague:

Elizabeth Banks

colleague:

Chloë Moretz

colleague:

Selena Gomez

References

• Dave Franco on Facebook