We now know James Franco as a man who is constantly working, but it wasn’t always so. After leaving UCLA to pursue acting, the financially struggling Franco got desperate. “I couldn’t find a job anywhere. I had very little work experience,” he told the Days of Yore. “Someone said, ‘Well, are you too good to work at McDonald’s?’ And so I said, ‘I guess not. I’m doing this because it’s what I really want to do, so I’ll work at McDonald’s, if that’s what it takes.’ I went and they hired me … I mostly worked the cashier window at the drive-through — I could do that well.” Still, he had his limits: “They didn’t put me anywhere near the burgers. Then, when I had to do the food window, I just got too confused and everything got backed up.” Ironically, it was another fast-food chain that saved him: After a few months working at McDonald’s, Franco got his first paid acting gig in a ghoulish commercial where Elvis dances inside a Pizza Hut. [Days of Yore]
