Like most well-recognizable A-list actors, the inimitable Woody Harrelson has some
love skeletons in his closet. Here's what we know about Woody Harrelson's first marriage,
and the real reason why it ended in divorce.
In most instances, you'd hope that a couple marries for love. In Woody Harrelson's case,
he didn't exactly rush to the altar the first time around for any sort of passionate romance.
According to the Los Angeles Times, after graduating from Indiana's Hanover College,
the actor made his way to New York, ready to start his acting career.
As it goes for most people, his big break didn't simply land in his lap.
As the Los Angeles Times notes, after, quote, "14 months and 17 jobs," the future celeb was
feeling defeated, ready to throw in the towel on his acting career. As fate would have it,
however, he suddenly, quote, "landed understudy roles in Neil Simon's [play] Biloxi Blues" — and
the role wasn't the only thing to catch Harrelson's attention. According to the outlet,
the actor apparently upset the playwright by wedding his daughter, Nancy Simon.
While we wish we could say this story had salacious gossip attached to it,
it looks like every party has kept pretty hush-hush about the rather
irregular union. As revealed by TCM, Harrelson and Nancy:
"[...] whimsically married in Tijuana in 1985 intending to divorce the following day,
but when the couple returned to the storefront marriage/divorce parlor,
they found it closed because it was Sunday."
Awkwardly enough, they remained legally married for 10 months.
While Nancy Simon's name may not ring many bells, her Pulitzer- and Tony-winning
father's plays might. The mastermind behind comedy classics like "Barefoot in the Park"
and "The Odd Couple", Neil Simon was often called, quote, "the world's most popular
playwright after Shakespeare", according to The Washington Post. Needless to say,
you can imagine the legendary writer's horror when he found out his daughter married an
up-and-coming actor as a lighthearted gag. Woody Harrelson explained to USA Today:
"I think at the time Neil was a little bit worried I might try to go after her money."
In the years that followed, he also made it abundantly clear he didn't
believe in being tied down. He told Barbara Walters in 1997:
"I don't believe really in [the] institution [of marriage]. You can't really say you're
gonna have and hold someone 'til death do you part because you don't know."
Sure enough, Neil didn't need to worry. According to TCM, the couple, quote,
"filed for a summary dissolution at [the] time Harrelson's career
suddenly took off." We have a feeling Nancy probably dodged a bullet too,
since the actor's newfound fame was filled with chaos and indulgence. He told The Guardian:
"I was 24 when I became famous. I got drunk on
success. My ego flared up. There's a lot of a--hole
things that I did that I can never take back. I carry a whole fricking boatload of regrets."
Romance wasn't the only thing on Woody Harrelson's mind in 1985.
Although that was the year he married his boss' daughter,
Nancy Simon, his dearly beloved wasn't his top priority. He told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I got my first job as an understudy in a Neil Simon play [in New York]. Then the guys
who did it got fired, and I was expecting to do that when I auditioned for Cheers."
The then-23-year-old landed the part of the now-iconic Woody Boyd on the
legendary comedy series — the same year he married Nancy. He explained further:
"I couldn't have imagined leaving [Cheers] because,
really, that show made me. I mean, I was anonymous and poor before that show."
Sure enough, Cheers definitely "made" Harrelson. The celeb suddenly had the A-list personality
to match, or as The Guardian put it, he was, quote, "having a wild time." He told the outlet:
"There was definitely a time of, what would you call it...
of Satyricon. A time of definite excess."
That so-called "excess," however, could have sent the actor down a very dark path.
Or, as another article by The Guardian revealed:
"Stardom spun his head. He drank too deeply, sowed his oats too freely,
and had a number of run-ins with the police. It took time to straighten out and settle down."
Something tells us Woody Harrelson shocked even those closest to him when he wed Nancy
Simon in 1985. After all, he wasn't exactly the type to want to settle down. Instead,
he would fill his time getting in trouble with the law, or as Barbara Walters put it:
"He became Hollywood's poster child for civil disobedience."
"Fact is I miss this shot, I'll walk away, I'm still a chump."
Along with enjoying living life on the wild side,
Harrelson was also known as, quote, "a serial womanizer." As The Times explained:
"During filming in the late 1980s [...] 'Wicked Woody' famously claimed to be
sleeping with three women a day, spending his time 'having as much sex' as he could."
According to the outlet, the celeb even claimed that he,
quote, "felt trapped in a relationship after three hours." Yikes, how did he
even last 10 months with poor Simon? He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017:
"I just never believed that it made any sense, this long-term monogamy thing that humans do.
Obviously, you can't have sex with anyone else, but many times you can't even be the person that
you were before. I just was incapable of long-term relationships. I was with whoever would have me."
Adding that relationships felt, quote, "proprietary," Harrelson related being
in a committed relationship to living "in a cage." We're hoping his quickie union wasn't that bad.
Woody Harrelson didn't exactly have a conventional childhood.
According to People, in 1968, when Harrelson was around seven, his father, Charles V. Harrelson:
"[...] vanished from their home in Houston,
leaving his wife, Diane [...] to support Woody and his two brothers."
While Woody would visit his dad on occasion, he told The Hollywood Reporter that this
was at Charles' girlfriend's home — and his dad, quote, "was gone all the time anyway."
An absentee father is already disheartening enough when you're a kid, but as it turns out, Woody's
dad was also a "convicted hitman". According to Inside Edition, it's believed that the actor's
dad was allegedly "responsible for 20 murders," and in 1982 was, quote, "convicted of conspiracy
to commit murder and [was] serving a life sentence in Illinois" until his death in 2007.
While Woody didn't exactly have a close relationship with his father growing up,
he surprisingly fostered a connection with Charles after he was incarcerated. In 1988,
two years after his divorce from Nancy Simon, People reported that
the star had been visiting his father in prison once a year. As the outlet wrote:
"Harrelson, still trying to figure out his father, does not plan to launch a family of his own soon."
In Harrelson's own words, he told the magazine:
"I can't see myself getting nailed down for quite a while.
I'm militantly single. I find it difficult to have sustained intimate relationships."
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