Woody Harrelson is considered one of Hollywood’s most talented actors but life hasn’t always been the success story he enjoys today; he rose from a challenging childhood, in the shadow of a hitman father, to become a much-loved Hollywood star.
Born in Midland, Texas, Harrelson said his father Charles Voyde Harrelson was rarely around during his childhood. His father first went to jail when Woody was seven years old, and then he was jailed for life for the 1979 killing of federal judge John H. Wood Jr.
Charles “Chuck” Harrelson died in a Colorado maximum security jail in 2007 while his son Woody was trying to free him, claiming that he had been given an unfair trial.
With his father mostly out of the picture he and his two brothers were dependent on their mom’s wage as a secretary to survive.
The actor sees himself as a lucky guy but it would have taken more than luck for this screen star to overcome such financial hardships and his father’s criminal antics, to become the star he is today.
Harrelson got his big break when he landed the part of simple-minded but sweet-natured barman Woody Boyd in the TV comedy Cheers between 1985 and 1993. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series from a total of five nominations.
Since this iconic role the now 60-year-old hasn’t looked back and is in just as much demand today as an actor than he was in his 30s.
He could have easily become typecast after playing the simpleton Woodrow, but he successfully broke away and has gone on to prove what a versatile actor he is, playing a psychopath in Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers, a devoted husband alongside Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, a champion rodeo star in The Cowboy Way, and a mentor in Hunger Games.
In 1996 he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role a Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine in the The People vs. Larry Flynt.
The success he has achieved is a far cry from his upbringing when he was buying newspapers in bulk and selling them around his neighborhood as a young boy. He also worked at an amusement park after he graduated from his school in Lebanon, Ohio, where he and his family moved to when he was 12.
After graduating from college he moved to New York City where he took just about any job he could get to pay the rent including waiting tables and posting gym flyers.
But two years of pinching pennies came to an end after landing the role of his much-loved character in Cheers, and he hasn’t looked back since.
The father of three admits to being something of a wild child looking for trouble in his youth but has proven that people can make dramatic changes in their lives if they put their mind to it.
“I was a pretty happy guy, but I also had a lot of rage,” he said, as per the Hollywood Reporter.
“When I was a kid, I had real emotional problems. I would have these tantrums. [Later] And I used to fight a lot. I used to go to bars and fight the guys I thought were bullies. I’ve got scars everywhere. But it’s like my buddy says: ‘If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.’ And I guess I do live on the edge.”
And then there was the time he was caught in a hotel room in London with three other women by a British tabloid newspaper photographer in 2002. He then had to explain it to his wife and mother of their three daughters.
But Harrelson turned the incident into a movie called Lost in London and also worked on becoming a better man, husband, and father. Today he considers himself a changed and a happier man, something he believes not many people can say.
“You rarely see a person change. Their personality stays very similar, unless it gets more cynical. But rarely do you see a person who is uncomfortable or unhappy transform and metamorphose into a happy person, unless they have some life-threatening illness and manage to overcome it. But I would say that I have changed, and pretty late into my life,” he said.
He has two movies in the making; action comedy movie The Man from Toronto and as yacht Captain Thomas Smith in Triangle of Sadness which will be his 85th movie.
Harrelson could have chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps but carved his own path in life, one that not only covers the golden road he has created for himself in Hollywood but as a father who is constantly striving to become a better person.
