James Franco, Girlfriend Ahna O'Reilly Broke Up (POLL)

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James Franco Tells Playboy He's Single

There's good news and bad news for fans who might want to make their James Franco fantasies come true.

The good: he's suddenly single. The actor, who next stars in the Aug. 5 Rise of the Planet of the Apes flick, tells Playboy magazine that he and actress Ahna O'Reilly recently ended their relationship, which had lasted for "four or five years," according to Franco.

But the bad news: The pair broke up because of Franco's super-packed schedule, specifically his ongoing pursuit of higher education.

"It's over," Franco told Playboy about his relationship with Forgetting Sarah Marshall actress O'Reilly. "That lasted about four or five years.  We'd been living together in L.A. and then came to New York to go to school for two years.  Then I signed-up for more school at Yale.  I think that was it for her."

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Franco, whose extracurricular activities from acting on the big screen have included writing a book, art shows, starring on General Hospital, infamously co-hosting the Oscars (and Tweeting about it, during the show), and directing movies and a documentary about Saturday Night Live, is as busy, if not more so, with his academic pursuits.

He earned an MFA at Columbia University, while, at the same time, attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Yale and studying digital media at Rhode Island School of Design. He's also one of 20 students selected (out of 400 wannabes) for the 2012 Ph.D. literature and creative writing program at the University of Houston.

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In between, he has squeezed out several movie projects, including the fact-based 127 Hours, which earned him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, and the new Apes movie, which serves as an origins story for the whole Planet of the Apes franchise. The movie co-stars Harry Potter's Tom Felton, John Lithgow, Brian Cox and Andy Serkis.