Let’s just get it out of the way: Dave Franco is James’ little brother. You first met him playing just that on the satirical Funny or Die web series Acting with James Franco, in which James taught Dave the dark secrets of the dramatic arts. In truth, one might expect the Franco boys to, say, rehearse lines together the night before an audition. One would be wrong. “We don’t really talk about acting very much,” he says. “We have a strong relationship and we work well together, but mainly with writing.” Franco is strangely calm considering he has a “huge” audition tomorrow. There will be no cramming, no panicking. “I’ll probably watch a movie and try to distract myself,” he says. By now, the 25-year-old actor has been to so many auditions that he knows most casting directors on a first-name basis, and yet he can’t quite figure out why they keep asking him to play assholes. “I don’t even know how to feel about it anymore,” he says. “I’m a nice guy, I promise.”
Nice or not, Franco will up the douche ante next summer in Fright Night, a big-budget remake of the 1985 horror flick, in which he plays a bully so vile, “you’ll be praying for his death,” he says. Fright Night isn’t Franco’s first brush with fake blood. Three classes away from earning a degree at the University of Southern California, he flew to Canada to shoot the unreleased Bad Meat, a B-horror movie he calls the worst experience of his life. “But it was my first starring role,” he says. “ The momentum started from there.” He is also writing and directing the web series Undergrads, a gritty, semi-scripted glimpse of life on USC’s campus. “I don’t want to pat myself on the back,” he says, very un-asshole-like, “but I’m really pleased with it.” (source)