Interesting facts about Woody Harrelson

woody harrelson

Woody Harrelson is an American actor, activist, and playwright.

His full name is Woodrow Tracy Harrelson.

Harrelson was born on July 23, 1961 in Midland, Texas.

He and his two brothers, Jordan and Brett Harrelson, were raised in a Presbyterian household.

His father was involved in crime and was rarely around. The family was poor, reliant on his mother’s secretary wage.

His ancestry includes English, Scottish, German, and distant Dutch and Welsh.

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In 1973, Harrelson moved to his mother’s native city, Lebanon, Ohio where he attended Lebanon High School.

After receiving degrees in theater arts and English from Hanover College, he had a brief stint in New York theater.

Than he was cast as Woody on TV series Cheers (1982), which wound up being one of the most-popular TV shows ever and also earned Harrelson an Emmy for his performance in 1989.

His first movie had been Wildcats, a 1986 football comedy with Goldie Hawn.

In 1991, Doc Hollywood (1991) gave him his first widely-seen movie role, and he followed that up with White Men Can’t Jump (1992).

white men cant jump

In 1993, Harrelson starred opposite Robert Redford and Demi Moore in the drama Indecent Proposal, which was a box office success.

Than Harrelson appeared as an irresponsible rodeo rider in the moronic buddy comedy The Cowboy Way, which proved to be an all-out clinker.

Harrelson’s career gained momentum when he starred in the Miloš Forman film The People vs. Larry Flynt (1994), in which he played Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film was a success and Harrelson’s performance was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for Best Actor.

the people vs larry flynt

In 1996 he starred in the drama The Sunchaser and in the comedy Kingpin.

Harrelson appeared in the war film Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and in had a featured role as Sergeant Schumann in Wag the Dog (1997).

He then appeared as part of an all-star lineup in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), and in 1999 gave a hilarious performance as Matthew McConaughey‘s meathead brother in EdTV.

In 2000, Harrelson starred in White Men collaborator Ron Shelton’s boxing drama Play It to the Bone.

play it to the bone

Harrelson did not appear in films again until 2003, when he co-starred as Galaxia in the comedy film Anger Management.

He appeared in the action film After the Sunset and the Spike Lee film She Hate Me. In 2005, Harrelson was in The Big White and North Country.

Harrelson made two films in 2006, the animated film version of Free Jimmy and also A Scanner Darkly.

In 2007 he played Carter Page III, gay escort of privileged Washington D.C. women, in the film The Walker.

In the Oscar-winning 2007 crime thriller No Country for Old Men, Harrelson had a key role as Carson Wells, a bounty hunter.

Also in 2007’s Battle in Seattle, Harrelson played another key role of a Seattle police officer whose pregnant wife loses her baby during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests.

In 2008, Harrelson appeared in several films, among them the Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro and the stark Will Smith drama Seven Pounds as a blind vegan meat salesman named Ezra Turner.

In 2009, Harrelson received significant praise for his performance as Captain Tony Stone in The Messenger. In what many critics considered to be his best role, Harrelson was nominated for a Satellite Award, an Independent Spirit Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Also in 2009, Harrelson co-starred in the horror comedy Zombieland.

zombieland

In 2010, he starred in the futuristic western martial arts film Bunraku and followed up with the film, Friends with Benefits.

In 2011, Harrelson snagged the coveted role of fan-favorite drunk Haymitch Abernathy in the big-screen adaptation of The Hunger Games (2012), which ended up being one of the highest-grossing movies ever at the domestic box office. Harrelson reprised that role for the sequels, which are scheduled for release in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Than he appeared in the dark comedy crime Seven Psychopaths co-staring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, and Christopher Walken, with Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko, and Željko Ivanek.

Harrelson played magician/mentalist Merritt McKinney in the Now You See Me film series (2013–2019).

now you see me

Harrelson starred along with Matthew McConaughey in the first season of the HBO crime series True Detective (2014).

In 2016 Harrelson announced that he would direct, write, produce, and star in a new movie, Lost in London, which was filmed as a single take and premiered live on January 19, 2017.

In 2017, he played the antagonist The Colonel in the science fiction film War for the Planet of the Apes. Also that year, he starred in The Glass Castle, an adaptation of Jeannette Walls’s memoir about how she was raised by dysfunctional and nonconformist parents and then had her world turned upside down when they moved to New York to be near her.

Than he appeared in the drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).

Woody Harrelson has an estimated net worth of $65 million.

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In 1985, Harrelson married Nancy Simon, daughter of playwright Neil Simon, in Tijuana. The union was not intended to be serious, and the two had planned to divorce the following day, but the storefront marriage/divorce parlor was closed when they returned to it, and they remained married for another ten months.

Harrelson married Laura Louie in 2008. Louie is Harrelson’s former assistant and a co-founder of Yoganics, an organic food delivery service. They have three daughters, Deni, Zoe, and Makani, and they live in Maui.

Harrelson is a vegan and raw foodist. Along with not eating meat or dairy, Harrelson also does not eat sugar or flour.

Moonlights as the lead singer in the band Manly Moondog and the Three Kool Hats.

Harrelson was arrested in Columbus (Ohio) in June 1983, charged with disorderly conduct – he was dancing in the street, halting traffic; he later jumped out of a moving police van, laughing maniacally, and finally punched one of the two arresting officers to the ground.

In 2015, Woody Harrelson and daughter Zoe starred in a 7-minute short film for U2’s ‘Song for Someone.’

He claims to have had 17 jobs in one year.

Is the owner of an oxygen bar in West Hollywood, California.