Woody Harrelson could so easily have remained the adorable goof behind America’s favorite bar forever. It’s hard to believe now, but for a while playing Woody Boyd on the sitcom Cheers seemed like the summit of Harrelson’s career. But the Texas-born yearling made quick work of landing choice film roles in Hollywood after the iconic Boston bar shut down operations in 1993.
Woody Harrelson went from starring in one of the most violent, experimental, and relentlessly criticized films of the 1990s Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers to starring in one of the most violent, experimental, and universally praised films of the the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men in 2007, with an Oscar-nominated turn as Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt in Milos Forman’s The People vs. Larry Flynt in between.
Celebrity poker player Woody Harrelson has had an unpredictable, brilliantly bipolar career that no one—let alone the actor himself—could have anticipated. A handful of his roles in new films are equally disparate: Woody Harrelson plays a gratuitous, slapstick zombie-slayer in the satirical walking-dead comedy Zombieland; a loose-cannon doomsday prophet in the upcoming disaster epic 2012; and a casualty notification officer in the somber military drama The Messenger. It’s this last film, though, that Woody Harrelson seems to have particularly treated as a labor of love. He talks to his friend and poker partner Owen Wilson about The Messenger, as well as speeding, losing at poker, jumping out at roommates, and a number of other eccentricities he’s managed to pick up over the years.
OWEN WILSON: Hey, buddy.
WOODY HARRELSON: Hey.
WILSON: Where are you?
HARRELSON: I’m in the beloved state of Hawaii. Maui.
WILSON: Where?
HARRELSON: I’m at your house. [laughs] No, I’m up in my house.
WILSON: Sounds like you’ve had a good run of poker there. Last you said, you won three games in a row?
HARRELSON: Yeah, three times in a row. That never happens. But I’m also managing to pull the chute a little earlier and get the hell out before I give it all back and start writing chits.
WILSON: That’s always been the scouting report on you in poker: Not a lot of discipline. So I’m glad to see that you’re learning how to walk away.
HARRELSON: Yeah, I’ve got to look at your scouting report sometime.
WILSON: We’re probably the two worst players in that Maui poker game.
HARRELSON: It’s not that. We’re just the most trusting.
WILSON: We’re the most optimistic, the most hopeful.
HARRELSON: We believe in our own luck.
WILSON: It’s such a cast of characters that play in that Maui poker game. I remember our one friend saying it looked like the bar scene from Star Wars.
HARRELSON: Those guys are scoundrels, man. They sit there and pick you clean.
About Woody Harrelson: Woody Harrelson is quickly becoming America’s most versatile actor. Since getting his big break as dimwitted bartender Woody Boyd in 1985, this cagey star has convincingly played everything from a murderous psychopath to a crippled porn magnate to a lasso-wielding cowboy. And he’s done it with panache, infusing all of his characters with an authenticity seldom seen in American cinema. It’s little wonder then that he’s been nominated for a pair of Oscars and Golden Globes and has won an Emmy, an American Comedy Award, an MTV Movie Award, and an NBR from The National Board of Review.
Woody Harrelson picked up right where he left off in 1994 with starring roles in three films including I’ll Do Anything, The Cowboy Way and Natural Born Killers. Although the first two films received little attention, Natural Born Killers became an international phenomenon, thanks to its use of gratuitous violence and its biting condemnation of mass media.
Woody Harrelson returned to more standard fare over the next two years in the entertaining buddy comedies Money Train in 1995 and Kingpin in 1996 before breaking the mold yet again in 1996 as the titular porn magnate in The People vs. Larry Flynt. The provocative film was a huge hit with critics and earned Harrelson his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Woody Harrelson rounded out the decade with performances in a dizzying array of films. He played an emotionally disturbed military prisoner in Wag the Dog in 1997, an unlucky ex-con in Palmetto in 1998, a battle-hardened sergeant in The Thin Red Line in 1998), an opportunistic screw-up in Edtv in 1999 and an aging boxer in Play it to the Bone in 1999). He also picked up his sixth Emmy Award nomination in 1999 after reuniting with his Cheers cast mate Kelsey Grammer for a hilarious episode of Frasier. In fact, Harrelson enjoyed his brief return to the small screen so much that he signed on to play Debra Messing's boyfriend, Nathan, in seven episodes of Will and Grace in 2001.
Woody Harrelson has continued to show off his versatility in recent years by playing a lasso-swinging cowboy in A Prairie Home Companion in 2006, an ambitionless junkie in A Scanner Darkly in 2006, a prim male escort in The Walker in 2007, a washed-up basketball player in Semi-Pro in 2008, a blind piano player in Seven Pounds in 2008, a bounty hunter in No Country for Old Men in 2007, Management with Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, 2012 an enthusiastic slayer of the undead in the surprise hit Zombieland in 2009 and his heroic movie Defendor.