Is James Franco gay?

The speculation over whether James Franco is gay continues. This week spurred on by... James Franco.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly the 32-year old actor, who is likely to get an Oscar nom for 127 Hours as well as co-host the event (with Anne Hathaway), again addressed the question and gave a nuanced answer.

"It's funny because the way that kind of stuff is talked about on blogs is so black-and-white," Franco says. "It's all cut-and-dry identity politics. 'Is he straight or is he gay?' Or, 'This is your third gay movie - come out already!' And all based on, gay or straight, based on the idea that your object of affection decides your sexuality."

The question came up in part due to the fact that Franco is just completing his third gay role in past three years - that of Hart Crane in The Broken Tower. He had previously starred as Harvey Milk's first lover in Milk and as Allen Ginsberg in Howl.

"There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys," he told EW. "And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I'm interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it's coincidental, in other ways it's not. I mean, I've played a gay man who's living in the '60s and '70s, a gay man who we depicted in the '50s, and one being in the '20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I'm interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition.

"Or, you know what, maybe I'm just gay."