James Franco passed the ‘Pudding’ award

James Franco was forced to wear a combination of a sequined pineapple bra, blue heels, a pirate eye patch and a blonde wig atop of his black suit Friday night in order to receive Harvard’s 43rd annual Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man of the Year award.

‘I wasn’t a man until tonight,’ Franco said.

During the traditional roast and presentation of the Pudding Pot award, Franco joked along with the audience and even playfully yanked the udder of a costumed gay cow that asked him to ‘milk’ it. Ren’eacute;e Zellweger received the Woman of the Year award Feb. 5 after a parade in Cambridge.

Franco said receiving the Pudding Pot was ‘more fun’ than a Golden Globe, in a press conference after he received the award.

‘I’ve received more emails, messages and texts that I won the Hasty Pudding award than for anything else,’ Franco said.

Franco is now in the company of previous Pudding Pot winners such as Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis.

As a child, Franco said he was too shy to act and needed an excuse to get started.

‘I had a girlfriend in high school in the theater department, and she did this play with this guy, and I was pretty jealous,’ Franco said. ‘I begged her not to do it, but she didn’t listen to me, rightly so. So, I decided to join the drama class.’

Franco burst onto the acting scene after a critically acclaimed turn in the 2001 TV movie ‘James Dean,’ and can be seen in the Oscar-nominated film ‘Milk’ as well as hits ‘The Pineapple Express’ and the ‘Spiderman’ franchise.

Harvard junior Megan Amram, the co-writer of the Hasty Pudding’s current production, ‘Acropolis Now,’ said Franco was ‘a very influential member of our generation due to his glorious good looks.’

‘He really is teaching the youth of the nation to be hotter,’ Amram said. ‘Also, I loved ‘Milk,’ and Hasty Pudding Theatricals is very pro-‘Milk.”

Carol Clemenko, who attended the event to support her son in ‘Acropolis Now’, said Franco is a versatile actor.

‘ ‘I was really impressed that he could go from one type of role to another with such ease,’ she said. ‘I think sometimes the Man of the Year is about their future, not about their past, and so he’ll be doing more and more.’

For his next project, Franco said he plans to play a young Allen Ginsberg, an eccentric American poet.

‘I love artistic characters,’ he said. ‘I just enjoy artistic types and seeing how a person’s life can be translated into his work.’