James Franco is an American actor, director and writer known for Freaks and Geeks, the Spider-Man films and an Academy Award nomination for 127 Hours. In the summer of 2026 he returned to social media with a TikTok series in which he said a non-human being had appeared at his home, building to grainy "alien" footage on July 13 that most online reactions treated as a publicity stunt or trolling. Those videos are his only connection to the UFO subject.

Franco was born on April 19, 1978, in Palo Alto, California. He played Daniel Desario on NBC's Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), won a Golden Globe for the 2001 television film James Dean and played Harry Osborn in all three Spider-Man films from 2002 to 2007. He won an Independent Spirit Award for Milk (2008), earned the best actor Oscar nomination for 127 Hours and co-hosted the 83rd Academy Awards with Anne Hathaway in 2011. He directed and starred in The Disaster Artist (2017), winning another Golden Globe as Tommy Wiseau, and starred in HBO's The Deuce. He also earned an English degree from UCLA and an MFA from Columbia, and published the story collection Palo Alto and the poetry collection Directing Herbert White.

After several years largely away from social media, Franco began posting in early June 2026 on the account @jamesfranco2319, insisting it was "really me" and that he was not "promoting anything," according to Newsweek. In mid-June he said something "not human" was in his garage, describing "glowing eyes and a hand," and declared, "I want to make it clear that this is not a hoax, this is real." He teased a reveal dated "7-13," said his account had been hacked and, when viewers suspected artificial intelligence, held up a handwritten sign with his username. LA Magazine noted a staged "wellness check" clip in which friends asked whether he was working with Steven Spielberg, which it read as a nod to the UFO film Disclosure Day.

On July 13 he opened a laptop and played black-and-white security-style clips of a tall, alien-like figure moving outside his house and looking through a window. "I didn't choose this," he said, and text promised "a lot more footage," some of it behind a paywall. The writer Nancy Jo Sales, in Air Mail, described the figure as looking like a person in an alien costume, and The Hollywood Reporter asked whether he was "trolling everyone." Mario Nawfal's X account called it a likely prank. Many viewers suspected promotion for Love Meets in the Sunshine, a film in which Franco stars, but its writer-director Christian Guiton said he had "nothing to do with this" and later said he had seen more footage at Franco's home. Within the UFO community, the researcher Joe Murgia wrote that even if Franco was sincere, he did not want him "anywhere near this topic."

In coverage through the summer, neither Franco nor his representatives explained the series beyond his insistence that it was real, and the account grew to about one million followers. The videos briefly made Franco, a former Oscar host and nominee, one of the most discussed names in UFO media in 2026, almost entirely as a subject of doubt.