How early fame almost corrupted Woody Harrelson: “My ego flared up”
Woody Harrelson has done so many amazing things over his long career, that it’s easy to forget that he got his start in a classic sitcom. The Texan got his big break as the imaginatively named Woody Boyd, bartender of the titular bar in Cheers. Harrelson joined the show in its fourth season as the loveable yet dimwitted youngster and stayed on until the grand finale. Woody ended the show as a Boston city councilman, thanks to a little help from Frasier Crane.
It was towards the end of his time on Cheers that Harrelson began to explore more varied film roles. He appeared in Indecent Proposal as a man who accepts a big money offer to let a stranger spend the night with his wife. Then came films like Natural Born Killers, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Thin Red Line. He found franchise success as Haymitch Abernathy in The Hunger Games and has appeared in big awards hitters like No Country for Old Men and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
It wasn’t guaranteed that Harrelson would convert his sitcom success into movie stardom and, according to the actor himself, striking it lucky early nearly derailed him. “I was 24 when I became famous,” he told The Guardian. “And that’s a big adjustment. Even the most amazing people get tainted. And I got drunk on success. My ego flared up. There’s a lot of asshole things that I did that I can never take back. I carry a whole fricking boatload of regrets – too many to mention. We’d be here all day.”
When contemplating why so many young stars go off the rails, the True Detective actor put it down to one word – ego. “You have a person who has a hole in their life, and they want it to be filled with attention and love,” he said. “So you become a famous rock star or actor, and you’re getting all this love from people who don’t know you. And it’s just a total head trip. It solves the initial problem, but the hole is not going to be filled up with that silly putty. It needs something real.”
Harrelson, who had numerous run-ins with the law during his more hedonistic days, credits the women in his life for calming him down. “I’ve got three daughters, the goddesses. And there’s my wife. And the dog is female. And so is the cat,” he recalled. “Females, females everywhere. I like a lot of yin energy. I’m very appreciative of women. I’m talking generally, not in the romantic sense, that’s a whole separate thing.”
Laura Louie, Harrelson’s wife, used to be his personal assistant and co-founder of an organic food delivery company. The pair wed in 2008. Harrelson’s three daughters are all from his marriage to Louie and were born in 1993, 1996, and 2006 respectively. The family lives on the Hawaiian island of Maui, which is another decision Harrelson credits with keeping him sane. “Oh, Hawaii,” he reminisced. “That’s the most amazing oasis. An incredible community of people who love each other and look out for each other and you don’t worry when the kids play out in the neighbourhood. Everybody knows everybody.”
Two films released in 2024 featured Harrelson; the Hulu-backed drama Suncoast and astronaut romcom Fly Me to the Moon. He has a very busy 2025 planned, as he will be reprising his role as Merritt McKinney in Now You See Me 3, starring in James L. Brooks’ Ella McCay, and lending his voice to the Russo brothers’ new sci-fi movie, The Electric State.
