The kind of brooding hunk that inspires bad high-school poetry, Franco was the perfect choice to play a handsome loner in the cult dramedy Freaks and Geeks. Although the series lacked longevity, this chiseled actor stuck around, earning an Emmy nod and a Golden Globe award for his deft channeling of a late legend in the TV biopic James Dean and solid reviews as a whimpering rich kid in the Spider-Man films. Wary of becoming a teen idol, Franco purposefully took on diverse projects that didn't necessarily cast him as the hero (or even antihero) and branched out into writing and directing with the straight-to-DVD independent comedy The Ape. Romantically, he was linked for a time to his Whatever It Takes costar Marla Sokoloff.