James Franco will be trapped at university - not under a rock (sorry) - when the Oscar nominations are announced today. He deserves to win the  Best Actor award for his role in 127 Hours, so hopefully everyone in his class will be slyly checking their BlackBerrys and doing hilarious one-arm-up-jumper gags at 13.30 GMT.

Following his MA course at New York's Columbia (pictured), James Franco is now studying at Yale (and also the Rhode Island School of Design), which is where he'll be today when the Academy Award nominees are announced.

Talking to AP about the fact that he's hosting next month's ceremony - and is also tipped to pick up a prize, he explained:

“I will be at school. I will be at Yale. Fox Searchlight asked me if I would go to New York to be ready … in case that I was nominated. I said, ‘No (laughs). I’m not gonna miss class to go and presume that I’m going to be nominated, but if you want to bring out a camera crew to Yale and wait and see if I get nominated, I’d be happy to step out of class and say I’m very grateful."

The sort-of-pretentious-but-probably-genuinely-maverick-actor also told Newsweek:

"I think if anybody who has made a home sex tape knows, what feels best doesn't always look best. I remember when I was 19 doing that, and then watching it back and thinking, 'Oh, that looks horrible.' You have a lot of respect for those actors in pornography, because they are really not just doing it, they're really selling it."

Presumably much, much less horrible than watching him hack off arm with a blunt pen-knife though (unless it's anything like Katie Price and Dane Bower's sex tape).