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Woody Boyd
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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