Who Was Julia Lazar Franco? All About Tom Franco’s First Wife

Julia Lazar Franco was an Austrian born artist, musician, and cook whose life crossed three continents before she became known as the first wife of artist and actor Tom Franco. Their marriage lasted less than a month, but their partnership lasted more than a decade.

Julia died on August 25, 2014, only weeks after she and Tom married in a hospital solarium in San Francisco. Behind that sad headline is a full creative life – music in Vienna, spiritual study in India, cooking in Paris, and art community work in Berkeley, California.

Quick Facts

Early Life in Vienna

Julia Lazar was born on November 7, 1957, in Vienna, Austria. She was the only child of two creative parents. Her father, Imre Lazar, was a filmmaker. Her mother, Marika Nagy, was a painter and illustrator, and some profiles also describe her as a talented cook. Art, images, and food were part of Julia’s home from the very start.

Growing up in Vienna placed her in one of Europe’s great cities for music and art. Reports about her young life say she was drawn to music early, and she later became the lead vocalist of a rock band called Exit. Details of the band’s career are not widely documented, and no major music archive tells its story in depth. Like much of Julia’s early life, it is known in outline rather than in detail.

In Vienna, she met the Austrian composer and musician Richard Schoenherz. They became partners, though they never married, and they had a daughter, Dawn Schoenherz. When Julia finished her formal education, the family moved across the Atlantic to Bolinas, California, a small and artistic coastal town north of San Francisco.

That move changed her path. California in those years drew artists, musicians, and spiritual seekers from all over the world, and Julia was all three. Bolinas became her first American home, and the Bay Area would, in time, become the place where she met Tom Franco and built her final creative chapter.

A Life of Searching – India, Paris, and Food

Profiles of Julia describe a long soul searching journey in the 1990s. She moved to Ganeshpuri, India, and lived in an ashram, an isolated spiritual community. There, she took charge of meals and cooking for the community. What began as a duty became a passion. Feeding people became one of the main creative acts of her life.

From India, her journey took her to Paris, where she studied at the Cordon Bleu culinary institute, one of the most famous cooking schools in the world. That step shows how seriously she took food. She was not only a home cook with talent. She trained at a professional level.

In the 2000s, she returned to California and joined another ashram community in the Bay Area. It was in that world – part spiritual, part artistic – that she met Tom Franco. Sources differ on the exact year and setting. Some say they met at the Bay Area ashram around 2003. Others link their meeting to 2004, during work connected with his short film A Peace of History. Mission Clay and Firehouse sources say she joined the Firehouse team in January 2010. The safe summary is that they knew each other for about a decade before they married, first as friends and creative partners.

Alongside music and cooking, profiles also credit Julia with work in photography, yoga, and curation of live art events. She was, by every account, a person of many skills who used all of them in service of community.

Tom Franco and the Firehouse Art Collective

Tom Franco was born Thomas Andrew Franco on April 14, 1980, in Palo Alto, California. He is the middle of three brothers. The oldest is actor and director James Franco, and the youngest is actor Dave Franco. His mother, Betsy Lou, is a writer and occasional actor. His father, Douglas Eugene Franco, ran a Silicon Valley business.

Tom studied fine art at the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating in 2002, and then studied ceramics at the California College of the Arts in Oakland. Although he has acted, including in Basket Case 2 and later in The Disaster Artist in 2017, his main work is art. In 2005, he co founded the Firehouse Art Collective in Berkeley, and he later became its sole director.

The Firehouse Art Collective is a nonprofit style community project that gives artists space to live, work, show, and perform. At its height, it ran several spaces in Berkeley and Oakland, with galleries, studios, living spaces, live art events, workshops, concerts, film nights, and organic food. Its stated mission is to empower the practice of artistry for personal and community well being.

Julia became a key part of that world. Firehouse sources say she joined the team in January 2010 and helped bring Tom’s work and the collective’s events to wider attention through live events and social media. She worked as a collaborating artist, a photographer, a curator of live art events, and a manager within the collective. In simple terms, Tom built the house, and Julia helped make it a home that the public could find.

The age gap between them was large, about 22 years, since she was born in 1957 and he in 1980. By all public accounts, it did not define their relationship. Shared art, shared spiritual interests, and shared work did.

A Wedding in a Hospital, and a Death Weeks Later

In 2014, Julia’s health failed badly. She suffered from liver disease that developed into liver cancer, along with hepatitis C and kidney failure. She was placed under intensive care in a hospital in San Francisco. There is no benefit in adding medical detail beyond what reports state, and this article does not offer medical information or advice. The human facts are enough.

On July 28, 2014, Tom and Julia married in a solarium at the hospital. Friends, family, and colleagues were invited so the day would feel like a real wedding and not a hospital event. Reports at the time and since describe it the same way – a couple who had been together for about ten years choosing to marry when time was short, surrounded by the people who loved them.

Julia died on August 25, 2014, less than a month after the wedding. She was 56 years old. The cause reported across sources is liver failure brought on by hepatitis C and liver cancer, with kidney complications. A memorial service was held for her on August 31, 2014.

Tom Franco became a widower at the age of 34, only weeks after becoming a husband. He continued his work with the Firehouse Art Collective. In 2021, he married Iris Torres, a film producer and assistant director whom he had known for years. That later marriage does not erase the first. In public profiles of Tom Franco, Julia Lazar is still listed first, and her years with the collective remain part of its history.

Her Legacy in the Art Community

Julia’s legacy is not measured in fame. She was not a film star, and she did not seek the spotlight that followed her husband’s famous brothers. Her legacy sits in a community – the artists who lived, cooked, performed, and showed work in the Firehouse spaces in Berkeley and Oakland.

People who wrote about her after her death used consistent words. Artist. Musician. Cook. Organizer. Partner. She sang in a band in Vienna, cooked for a spiritual community in India, trained in Paris, and then helped run an art collective in California. Few lives connect that many worlds.

Her story is often told only through its ending, because the hospital wedding is so moving and so sad. But the fuller record matters. For most of her 56 years, Julia Lazar was building things – meals, events, communities, and a partnership with a younger artist who credited her with bringing his work to the public.

That is the right way to remember Tom Franco’s first wife. Not only as the woman who died weeks after her wedding, but as the creative partner who helped shape one of the Bay Area’s best known artist communities.

FAQs

Who was Julia Lazar Franco?

She was an Austrian-American artist, musician, and trained cook, born in Vienna in 1957. She became widely known as the first wife of artist and actor Tom Franco, the brother of James Franco and Dave Franco.

How did Julia Lazar Franco die?

She died on August 25, 2014, from liver failure linked to hepatitis C and liver cancer, with kidney complications, according to public reports. She was 56.

When did Julia Lazar marry Tom Franco?

They married on July 28, 2014, in a hospital solarium in San Francisco, after about ten years together. She died less than a month later.

Did Julia Lazar Franco have children?

Yes. She had a daughter, Dawn Schoenherz, from her earlier relationship with Austrian composer Richard Schoenherz.

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Final Thoughts

Julia Lazar Franco lived a wide and creative life that began in Vienna and ended in California. She was a singer, a cook trained in Paris, a spiritual seeker who lived in India, and a central figure in the Firehouse Art Collective beside Tom Franco.

Her marriage lasted only weeks because illness took her life in August 2014, but her partnership with Tom lasted a decade and left a mark on Berkeley’s art community that outlived her. That full story – not just the sad ending – is what her name deserves to be remembered for.

Featured photo: Tom Franco – photo by Cindy Lynch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons