The story of how Led Zeppelin kept Woody Harrelson’s ego in check: “You never rest on your laurels”
Perhaps you grew up watching Woody Harrelson play a bartender on Cheers, still unable to shake the image of him in the sitcom from everything you’ve seen him in since, or maybe you know him best from The Hunger Games series, in which he portrayed the mentor Haymitch Abernathy. Harrelson has had an incredibly varied career since he started acting in the 1980s, never pinning himself down to one specific genre.
While he has consistently proven his skill in comedy, the actor has also made his mark in crime dramas like Natural Born Killers, biopics such as The People vs. Larry Flynt, and war films like The Thin Red Line. In 1996, he earned his first Oscar nomination for playing Larry Flynt, ultimately losing to Geoffrey Rush for Shine. Since then, he has picked up two more nominations for The Messenger and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, further cementing his brilliance.
The actor has consistently starred in both acclaimed and commercially successful films, but the pressures of acting and living under the spotlight have clearly taken a toll on Harrelson at times. After the release of The People vs. Larry Flynt, directed by Miloš Forman, he was disappointed by the film’s reception, despite receiving an Oscar nomination, and decided to step away from Hollywood for a while.
“I was not enjoying it. Like, this is a job you should be enjoying. So, it was a good opportunity to do another important thing, which was – and the most important of all of it – which was to hang more with my family. And, so that’s what I did,” he explained to NPR. “You know, we moved off-grid and out of sight and just had a ball together. So, one of my better decisions. I didn’t think it was going to be five years, but I thought it would be [a] couple – three years. And then it was just fun.”
Harrelson has learned the importance of not getting bogged down by work and not letting success get the better of him. Perhaps that’s why he played down the acclaim for his Oscar-nominated role—he refuses to be overtaken by past accomplishments, always looking ahead and knowing when to take a break and when to move forward.
The actor revealed to Broadway Buzz that he was inspired by Led Zeppelin to “never really rest on your laurels,” he explained. “I ran into Robert Plant at the Mercer Hotel. I really love Led Zeppelin and I said, ‘You must feel phenomenal about all that you’ve accomplished.’ And he said, ‘You don’t rest on your laurels. You don’t live on what you did.’”
He added: “If you had made all of the music Led Zeppelin did, made you might say, ‘Hey, I’m moving to an island. I’ve got all the money I need.’ But performers just want to keep performing.”
Even though Harrelson has previously moved “off-grid” when finding Hollywood too much, he has since kept the advice given to him by Plant in mind. You can take a break, sure, but you can’t let your previous accomplishments stop you from being ambitious.
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