This story is like a soap opera, which is pretty fitting since it involves James Franco, a sometimes-soap actor who's also a movie star/author/perpetual student of the world. The 34-year-old has reportedly embarked on a romance with "Pretty Little Liars" actress Ashley Benson, who at 22, is 12 years his junior. Franco and Benson, who co-star in the movie "Spring Breakers" with Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, have been seen hanging out together off-camera on both coasts, and were spotted holding hands on one occasion, according to the New York Post. The juiciest part of the story is that Gomez supposedly didn't like this news, because it caused Benson to break it off with her previous boyfriend, Ryan Good, who's a close friend of Gomez's boyfriend Justin Bieber. Got all that?
Now Franco is shooting down the rumors about the drama that's supposedly been going on between him and Benson and Gomez. He also added another young actress, Kristen Stewart, into the mix ... just to make it a little more confusing! (You might remember that Franco was rumored to be flirting with Stewart at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.) In a lengthy new column for the Huffington Post, Franco makes light of all the speculation about his love life.
"I also hear that I've been dating Selena Gomez, Kristen Stewart and Ashley Benson. Hot damn, am I a lucky guy," Franco writes. "I wish I had actually gotten closer than the 13th row of the theater in Toronto where Kristen gave her 'On the Road' Q and A, but I didn't; not only did I not talk to her, I didn't even go to the SoHo house where I supposedly asked her out on a date. As for Gomez and Benson, those are Bieber's girls and I wouldn't dare tangle with the Biebs. I heard he wants to kick my ass. Yikes!"
So where was that sense of humor when Franco was co-hosting the Oscars?
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