Ahna O'Reilly's Boyfriend James Franco: "Maybe I'm Just Gay"

NEW YORK (CBS) James Franco has played a number of gay characters - but it's the actor's sexuality that people are curious about.

Many have wondered if the "127 Hours" actor - who has been dating actress Ahna O'Reilly ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall," "The Help") for years - is a gay man.

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Franco addressed the rumor mill in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

"It's funny because the way that kind of stuff is talked about on blogs is so black-and-white," Franco told the magazine. "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."

Franco's crecits are packed with gay characters, from Allen Ginsberg in "Howl," to Scott Smith in "Milk" and poet Hart Crane in the upcoming film "The Broken Tower."

"There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys," he said. "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."

And what does O'Reilly think of the speculation her boyfriend is gay?

"It's news to me!" O'Reilly is quoted as saying back in September.