Known for his award-winning performances and his laid back off-screen personality, Woody
Harrelson's life might seem charmed in practically every way. Over the years, however, the actor's
hard partying and demanding career have taken their toll. This is the tragic real-life story
of Woody Harrelson.
Looking back at his childhood in Midland, Texas, Woody Harrelson admits he may have
been a lot to handle. In an interview with Esquire, the actor confessed:
"I had a lot of anger, a lot of rage."
Somehow, the young Harrelson found a way to get kicked out of his nursery school — and
then first grade. After an incident in which teachers accused Harrelson of stealing a purse,
he allegedly began breaking windows around the school with his bare fists.
So where did this anger come from? Well, Harrelson's father left the family when he was only seven,
and this seems to have affected his mindset. And, as he himself told GQ:
"I think I was also just too soft. I was so sensitive, so vulnerable."
As a result, Harrelson vowed to toughen up and refuse to be pushed around. But this decision
manifested in some pretty harmful ways. He admitted to having frequent tantrums and holding
onto his rage as he grew older. Harrelson revealed to The Hollywood Reporter:
"I used to go to bars and fight the guys I thought were bullies. I've got scars everywhere."
His fighting ways continued even after becoming a famous actor. In 2009, for example, he attacked
a reporter at an airport, later claiming he had mistaken him for a zombie.
The story of Woody Harrelson's father seems more like a movie than real life. He was a
contract killer and a big-time gambler, who, in 1979, was arrested and sentenced to two
life terms for the killing of John Wood Jr., a federal judge in San Antonio. But, according
to Harrelson himself, Charles was more than just a killer.
"You said once that your father was a CIA operative. Yes?"
"Yeah, he was."
Charles eventually passed away in 2007 while serving his double life sentence. In an interview
with The Guardian, the only positive thing Woody cared to share about Charles was his
advice to "always keep an open mind."
Woody seldom talks about his father, who left the family when the future actor was only
seven years old. But he does remember a few things about the infamous family patriarch.
Harrelson told The Hollywood Reporter:
"He was quite a charming fellow and a gambler. He made a lot of money gambling. He cheated,
but he was more of a con artist."
As an example, Harrelson revealed that Charles would invite his intended victims onto his
boat for a relaxing day of fishing. And then:
"He'd say, 'Want to play a couple hands?' And before you know it, the guy's completely
fleeced."
In his early 20s, Woody Harrelson considered an entirely different career than acting.
Instead, he was seriously entertaining the notion of becoming a cop — or a member of
the FBI or secret service. But after an incident that landed him in jail for a night, he decided
to give up and take another path.
It all began when the star and a friend were stopped for jaywalking. The actor claimed
he didn't have identification, but the officer caught him in the lie, having realized that
he must have had an ID to enter the local bars. The police officer then proceeded to
— in Harrelson's words — "smash him against the wall a couple of times," before the actor
pushed off the cop and ran away. But his getaway was short lived, as the officer called for
backup. As Harrelson recalls it:
"Soon I'm just surrounded by blue, and they had me down on the ground, knee in my throat."
While he was in the police van, however, the officers stopped to arrest another man. Once
the doors opened, Harrelson ran away for a second time. The chase ended quickly, Harrelson
wound up with a face full of mace, and he spent the night in jail. Looking back, he
said:
"And that was my first experience with the long arm of the law, and it had a big impact
on me 'cause I really had rose-colored glasses on [in terms of] what I thought the world
was."
But that wasn't the end of Harrelson's difficult relationship with the law. After he became
a successful actor, he once again found himself in trouble, when police arrested him in 2002
following a long chase through the streets of London. Apparently, while Harrelson took
a cab from a nightclub back to his hotel, he broke an ashtray and a door lock inside
the vehicle. As the taxi driver later said:
"He had suddenly gone completely bonkers."
Harrelson reportedly jumped out of the cab, hailed another, and sped off with the first
driver in hot pursuit. The police then arrived, trapping his getaway car…but Harrelson still
had some more fight in him. He leapt out of the second car and fled on foot, before eventually
being stopped by the police. After this incident, Harrelson spent the night in a London jail.
The actor later explained his side of the story to The Telegraph but conceded:
"I'm not excusing my behavior. I was a freaking idiot."
Having given up on his short-lived idea of being a cop, Woody Harrelson pursued his dream
of performance by studying English and Theater at Hanover College in Indiana. Once he graduated,
a close friend was accepted into the prestigious Juilliard School. The friend asked Harrelson
to relocate with him to New York, and the young actor agreed. Like many young talents
who move to The Big Apple for a chance at fame, however, Harrelson found himself without
much work.
As he continued unsuccessfully to search for roles in the theater, he just about gave up.
The star later told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I figured I'd try to segue into some regional theater, just work my way into production."
Suddenly, however, Harrelson was cast in an understudy spot on Broadway and shortly after
that, he landed the role of a lifetime.
At age 23, Woody Harrelson was out in Los Angeles taking a break from his understudy
role on Broadway. Safe in the comfort of knowing he already had a job waiting back in New York,
Harrelson auditioned for a show which turned out to be a little sitcom called Cheers.
Prior to the audition, Harrelson had known about the hugely popular show, but never watched
it. And as producer Peter Casey later said, Harrelson showed up to read for the part looking
like he had just come off a basketball court. But this sense of bravado irked some of his
castmates, like the show's star Ted Danson. As Danson later remembered:
"So in walked Woody, who was instantly great, but offstage, it was [all] testosterone."
Apparently, all the guys on set tried to beat Harrelson at… pretty much everything, including
basketball, chess, and arm-wrestling. But the young stud was too much to handle. Danson
admitted:
"Woody cleaned everybody's clock in everything."
But his newfound sitcom fame only added to his separation from others. Harrelson told
The Guardian that, prior to Cheers:
"I'd been gregarious, someone who enjoyed the company of others. [But] the pressure
of people that I didn't know constantly wanting to talk to me made me recoil and become less
outgoing."
Harrelson confessed the show had quite a negative impact on his life. He said:
"I went through a period of arrogance and having my head up my ass."
Once he landed his dream role on Cheers in 1985, Harrelson quickly earned a reputation
of fully enjoying life. He later told GQ:
"I became a party animal. You couldn't do what I did now because of all the tweeting
and Facebooking. All the s--- I did back then, I'd be hung from the rafters."
"I didn't think I was dealing with it very well. I was…"
"What does that mean?"
"A bit of a madman."
Nearly two decades later, he was still living life to the fullest, and it managed to get
him into a heap of trouble at home. While filming in London in 2002, Harrelson found
himself at a bar when two women approached him. The women asked if he wanted, in their
words, to "take a walk on the wild side", to which replied in the affirmative. A third
woman then joined in the fun, and the group returned to Harrelson's accommodation to enjoy
what Rolling Stone described as "whatever-happened-next."
Unfortunately for the star, a nearby paparazzo was able to snap a photo that quickly hit
the tabloids. The worst part was that his then-girlfriend and future-wife Laura Louie
saw these photos in the press. After no small amount of groveling on Harrelson's part, however,
the couple managed to work past the incident.
Early in his career, things seemed to be going perfectly for Woody Harrelson. After landing
his successful role on Cheers, he exploded in popularity with his role in White Men Can't
Jump alongside the controversial actor Wesley Snipes. Afterwards, he starred in Oliver Stone's
Natural Born Killers. Not only did the film have a hugely famous director, but a young
Quentin Tarantino wrote the original script. The movie was highly controversial, however,
because of its subject matter and violent themes. In an interview with Fade In, Harrelson
said he was negatively affected by all criticism surrounding the film. He confessed:
"It was terrible."
A few years after Natural Born Killers, Harrelson portrayed Hustler publisher Larry Flynt in
The People vs. Larry Flynt, which earned him a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards.
"What's your name?"
"Sophie."
"Tell everybody the pervert is back."
"The pervert is back."
But once again, Harrelson was caught up in controversy about the film, specifically,
the famed feminist Gloria Steinem's campaign to discourage movie goers from seeing it.
As Harrelson explained:
"For Gloria Steinem to go around the country and tell women to make sure they don't see
it, and to make sure their husbands don't see it...that hurt. I wanted to take some
time off after that. I needed to back away from this job."
Despite having enjoyed a long and impressive career, Harrelson has still made some missteps,
and in an interview with GQ, the actor recalled the moment he considers his biggest regret.
At the time, Harrelson was in Los Angeles working alongside famous actor/director John
Cassavetes on a play. Harrelson admitted:
"I had a full realization of how amazing this guy was, although I didn't understand in terms
of his larger body of work and his influence on independent movies."
The younger Harrelson, then in his mid-20's, was in the running for a movie set to film
in Rome. So he bailed on the stage show with Cassavetes. But Harrelson ended up not getting
the part in Italy. Though he claims Cassavetes would have let him back in the play, Harrelson
never returned. He said:
"One of the worst decisions of my life. I regret not coming back when I could have."
Though Harrelson admitted that professionally, it may not have hurt his career chances, he
messed up on a personal level. Harrelson confessed:
"I should have stuck by that guy. He took a chance on me. That was a real lack of integrity
on my part."
Many people dream of making it big in Hollywood, but the life of a mega star does come with
its fair share of downfalls. And as he grew older and started a family, the same hard
work that made Harrelson famous began to have an impact on his life. He once told NPR:
"I feel like I've probably just spent too much time running around doing these movies...I
just need, I think, to chill out and spend some time at home."
It's easy to understand why he would miss life at home. Harrelson and his wife Laura
Louie have been married since 2008, and the couple have three daughters together in Maui,
Hawaii. During his interview with NPR in London, the actor shared his grueling schedule working
in film. He explained:
"By the time I leave here, I will have been home one week in a year, in the past year...So,
yeah, it's just not fair to my family. I'm just a little knackered from the whole process...and
just ready to go home."
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