【Tina Tyler Archives】

Five women have Tina Tyler Archivesaccused James Franco of sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Four of the women were his acting students, and the fifth said he was her mentor.

Franco's attorney denied the allegations, and pointed the Timesto what Franco said on The Late Show with Stephen ColbertTuesday night, when Colbert asked Franco about the rumors.

"Look, in my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I have done,” he told Colbert. “...The things that I heard that were on Twitter are not accurate. But I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn’t have a voice for so long. So I don’t want to shut them down in any way.”

(Franco made similar comments to Seth Meyers Wednesday night, before the Los Angeles Timesstory broke.)

Sarah Tither-Kaplan, a former acting student at Franco's now-closed acting school, Studio 4, spoke out on Twitter Sunday night during the Golden Globes when she saw Franco wearing a Time's Up pin.

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The women in the Times' story, including Tither-Kaplan, discuss how there was a lot of pressure at Studio 4, and how he “would always make everybody think there were possible roles on the table if we were to perform sexual acts or take off our shirts," according to one of the women the Timesspoke with, Katie Ryan.

Another woman said Franco asked the students to take their tops off and became "visibly angry" when they declined. Franco's attorney denied this to the Times.

"I don't think he started teaching with bad intentions, but he went down a bad path and damaged a lot of people in the process," former student Hilary Dusome explained.

Tither-Kaplan opened up about one such situation:

But one day on set in May 2015, a producer approached her and other women to ask if they wanted to film a “bonus scene” of an orgy. In it, Tither-Kaplan appeared fully nude in the background, she said. A handful of other women were selected to appear with Franco, who simulated performing oral sex on each of them, Tither-Kaplan said. But in each case, she said he removed a clear plastic guard that covered their vaginas — and continued to simulate the sex act with no protection.

Then, Tither-Kaplan said, she and her female co-stars were asked to appear topless in an unscripted scene and dance around Franco while wearing animal skulls atop their heads. One actress who balked was sent home the next day, Tither-Kaplan said.

“I got it in my head pretty quickly that, OK, you don’t say ‘no’ to this guy,” she said.

Tither-Kaplan noted that after the Harvey Weinstein news broke in October, Franco reached out and "apologized for making her feel uncomfortable."

“I want to give him credit for at least being open to communicating with me,” she said. “I felt that he was still not really taking accountability for the environment on the sets.”

This is not the first time Franco has been in the news for inappropriate behavior. In 2014, he admitted to trying to pick up a 17-year-old via social media, an episode he later joked about on Saturday Night Live.

Earlier this week, the New York Timescanceled a planned talk with the actor in light of recent allegations.

Read the Los Angeles Times' full account, which includes details from other women as well, here.