Franco to take on Ginsberg role

James Franco is to play homosexual poet Allen Ginsberg in new movie Howl.

The picture marks the second consecutive gay role for the actor after he played Scott Smith, the longtime partner of gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk, in Milk.

However, Franco insisted that the sexuality of the characters he plays does not "make any difference to me".

"Ginsberg has been one of my heroes, and this movie is just so important," he told the New York Daily News.

"I'm playing him when he was in his late 20s, just after he went to Columbia. We work with the old pictures. He has hair, he doesn't have a beard and he's not huge."

Howl is named after Ginsberg's most famous poem. The movie will focus on the 1957 obscenity trial caused by the piece.