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Background:
"When I let up from the weed, and the drinking too, I cried every day. And I
liked that. I like crying. And now I not only wanna cry and show my crying to
other people, I wanna just split myself down the middle and open my guts and
just throw everything out!" Woody Harrelson.
First noticed while playing the Emmy-winning role of bartender Woody Boyd
(1985-1993) on the now classic NBC sitcom "Cheers," Woody Harrelson garnered
international attention when he earned Best Actor Oscar nomination for
portraying controversial pornographer Larry Flynt in the biopic The People vs.
Larry Flynt (1996). He has starred in such films as Doc Hollywood (1991), White
Men Can't Jump (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994),
The Thin Red Line (1998), Play It to the Bone (1999), After the Sunset (2004)
and North Country (2005). Recently seen in A Prairie Home Companion and A
Scanner Darkly, Harrelson is set to star in the upcoming films The Grand, The
Walker, No Country for Old Men, and Then She Found Me. He is currently on the
board of the directors for the Ex'pression Center For New Media, an art school
in Emeryville, California.
The 5' 11" tall, blond, blue-eyed and somewhat slack-jawed actor was one of
People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in The World” (1990). He was
romantically linked to actresses Glenn Close (had five-month relationship in
1991) and Penelope Ann Miller (dated while appearing on Broadway in “Biloxi
Blues”). The ex-husband of Nancy Simon (playwright Neil Simon’s daughter),
Harrelson is now married to his former assistant and has three daughters.
Off screen, Harrelson is somewhat controversial. He is an outspoken supporter
for the legalization of marijuana (he has been arrested several times for his
activities) and hemp in the USA. He is also an antiwar activist and has often
spoken publicly against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I don't think of myself as a political activist, but an economic activist...Did
you know 95 percent of the world's paper was made from hemp? That everything
from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate? So, why are we making
plastic from petroleum? That's what I'm interested in, taking this country back
and giving it to the farmer. That's what Henry Ford was about. That first Model
T car was jute and hemp... the fuel was to be bio-fuel; you'd get fuel from hemp
seeds." Woody Harrelson.
Hitman’s Son
Childhood and Family:
Born in Midland, Texas, on July 23, 1961, Woodrow Tracy Harrelson grew up in
Lebanon, Ohio, Ohio with his deeply religious mother, Diane Lou Oswald (born in
1937; was a legal secretary; divorced Woody’s father in 1964). His father,
Charles Voyde Harrelson (born July 23, 1938), was a professional hitman and was
jailed for performing a hired killing for most of Woody’s childhood. He has been
convicted twice for committing paid murders: in 1968 and in 1978, for the murder
of Federal Judge John Wood. Woody once believed that his father was a CIA
operative and one of "the hobos" taken away from the “grassy knoll” in Dallas,
Texas, right after the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
He has also often said that his father's past has colored his own present.
Woody has two brothers: Jordan Harrelson (actor; older) and Brett Harrelson
(actor, professional motorcycle racer; younger). A deemed dyslexic, hyperactive
and psychologically disturbed as a child, Woody attended Lebanon High School and
later studied drama at Hanover College in Indiana on scholarship. He received a
Bachelor of Arts in Theater Arts and English in 1983. He was also a member of
Sigma Chi fraternity.
On June 29, 1985, Harrelson married playwright Neil Simon’s daughter, Nancy
Simon, but they divorced the following year. He then tied the knot with his
former assistant, Laura Louie (she also co-founder of Yoganics, an organic food
delivery service, and a partner in their production company, Children at Play),
on January 11, 1998. The couple, who have been together since 1990, has three
daughters: Deni Montana (born March 5, 1993), Zoe Giordano (born September 22,
1996), and Makani Ravello (born June 3, 2006). They referred to their three
daughters as their "goddess trilogy." As of 2004, Harrelson lives with his wife
and children in Costa Rica.
A good friend of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Harrelson also moonlights as the
lead singer in the band Manly Moondog and the Three Kool Hats. His friends from
the rock band Hootie & The Blowfish wrote the song "Woody" about him. The song
is featured on the group's eponymous 2003-album.
The People vs. Larry Flynt
Career:
Aspiring actor Woody Harrelson began performing in high school plays and made
his TV debut appearance in the comedy starring Barbara Eden, Harper Valley P.T.A.
in 1978. After graduating from college, he moved to New York City. In 1985, he
understudied two roles, Roy Selridge and Joseph Wykowski, in the Broadway
production of Neil Simon's "Biloxi Blues." That same year, his big break arrived
as he won the role of charming, naïve bartender Woody Boyd on the NBC sitcom
“Cheers.” The notable role earned Harrelson five consecutive Emmy Award
nominations (1987-1991) and won him one in 1989, for Outstanding Supporting
Actor in a Comedy Series. He also won the "Funniest Newcomer" at the American
Comedy Awards. Harrelson continued to stay on the long-running show until its
conclusion in 1993.
Meanwhile, Harrelson got his first film speaking role, only one line, as a high
school football player whose coach is Goldie Hawn, in Michael Ritchie's 1986
football comedy Wildcats. It also featured Wesley Snipes in his first feature
appearance. Afterward, Harrelson acted mostly on the small screen, on NBC
made-for-TV melodramas Bay Coven (1987) and Killer Instinct (1988) as well as
Cheers: 200th Anniversary Special (1990) and Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme (1990).
He also starred in the direct-to-video romantic comedy Cool Blue/Creative Detour
(1990) and played bit parts in 1991 films Ted and Venus and L.A. Story. On
stage, he appeared off-Broadway in a production of "The Boys Next Door" in 1988.
Harrelson formed his own production company, Shepwood Productions, in 1990.
Harrelson eventually revived when director Michael Caton-Jones handed him the
role of Hank Gordon, a small-town insurance salesman who is also Michael J Fox's
romantic rival, in 1991's romantic comedy Doc Hollywood, based on the book
"What? Dead again?" by Neil Shulman M.D. The next year, he nabbed his first
leading role in a major motion picture, in Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump,
alongside Wesley Snipes. The basketball comedy movie proved to be one of the
surprise box-office hits that year. Harrelson followed it up with another
memorable role, as Demi Moore’s jealous yuppie husband who let his wife sleeping
with another man to get one million dollars, in Adrian Lyne's fanciful romantic
drama inspired by Jack Engelhard's novel, Indecent Proposal (1993; also starring
Robert Redford). Also in that year, Harrelson wrote, directed and acted in Los
Angeles stage production, “Furthest From the Sun.”
The next years saw Harrelson teamed with Juliette Lewis as lovers and
psychopathic serial murderers in Oliver Stone's controversial Natural Born
Killers (1994) and reunited with Snipes as two foster brothers in Joseph Ruben's
disappointing movie Money Train (1995; also with Jennifer Lopez; Harrelson
played a vengeful New York transit cop who steals a trainload of subway fares).
He also garnered international attention in 1996 when he received a Best Actor
Oscar nomination for his brilliant turn as controversial pornography publisher
Larry Flynt in Milos Forman's biographical drama The People vs. Larry Flynt.
During the rest of the 1990s, Harrelson had supporting roles in 1997’s Welcome
to Sarajevo and Wag the Dog, a high-profile cameo as Sergeant Keck in Terrence
Malick's 1998 WW II film adapted from the James Jones novel of the same name,
The Thin Red Line (had previously been adapted in 1964) and played a 1940s
rancher opposite Billy Crudup in Stephen Frears' take on Max Evans' novel, the
contemporary Western The Hi-Lo Country (1998). He played Matthew McConaughey's
rakehell brother in Ron Howard's EDtv and reteamed with writer-director Ron
Shelton to star opposite Antonio Banderas, as two best friends and former boxers
trying to resurrect their careers in Las Vegas, in Play It to the Bone (both in
1999). In an episode of "Frasier," Harrelson reprised his Woody Boyd character
and earned Emmy nomination as Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. As for
his stage work, Harrelson directed a revival of his stage play "Furthest From
the Sun," starring Steve Guttenberg, and returned to Broadway as star of a
revival of "The Rainmaker."
In the new millennium, Harrelson performed on stage in a production of "The Late
Henry Moss," written by Sam Shepard, opposite Nick Nolte and Sean Penn. He then
played a love interest for Debra Messing's Grace, Nathan, on several episodes of
the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace" before appearing with Adam Sandler and Jack
Nicholson in Peter Segal's comedy Anger Management (2003), as Galaxia/Garry the
Guard. Subsequently, he was cast in Spike Lee’s comedy She Hate Me and in Brett
Ratner's thriller After the Sunset, as an FBI agent who caught in a
cat-and-mouse game with a master thief (played by Pierce Brosnan).
In 2005, Harrelson became Julianne Moore's alcoholic husband in Jane Anderson's
biopic based on the book by Terry Ryan, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, and
played an idealistic attorney in director Niki Caro's Oscar-nominated film North
Country, based on the case Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co. brought by Lois Jenso,
alongside Oscar nominees Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand. More recently,
he appeared as singing cowboy Dusty in Robert Altman's comedy A Prairie Home
Companion (Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan and Tommy Lee Jones), based on Garrison
Keilor's long-lived radio program with the same name, and appeared in Richard
Linklater's rotoscoped film A Scanner Darkly (costarring with Keanu Reeves and
Winona Ryder), based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name. Harrelson is
set to star in the upcoming films The Grand, The Walker, No Country for Old Men,
and Then She Found Me.
Awards:
- Woodstock Film Festival: Honorary Maverick Award, 2003
- Western Heritage Awards: Theatrical Motion Picture, The Hi-Lo Country,
1999
- MTV Movie Awards: Best Kiss, Indecent Proposal, 1994
- Razzie: Worst Supporting Actor, Indecent Proposal, 1994
- Emmy: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, “Cheers,” 1989
- American Comedy Awards: Funniest Newcomer - Male or Female, “Cheers,”
1987
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