The method actor who constantly irritated Woody Harrelson: “Made me want to fucking slap him”
Method acting continues to divide opinion, and it probably always will. Some actors swear by it, while others think it’s an egomaniacal waste of time. Woody Harrelson isn’t a performer who eats, sleeps, lives, and breathes their characters, and working with someone who does drove him to the brink.
For every Marlon Brando or Robert De Niro who embraces the method and uses it to bring performance to new heights, there’s a Jared Leto or Shia LaBeouf who seems to think going too far is the best way to embrace a character. When it works, it works; when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.
Harrelson has always been a guy who shows up at work, does the job, switches it off, and then goes home. Ironically, one of his closest friends is the exact opposite, and those vastly differing approaches caused plenty of tension when he reunited with longtime buddy and potential half-sibling Matthew McConaughey to shoot the first season of HBO’s True Detective.
To be fair, the Academy Award winner was excellent in both time periods of the dual-wielding narrative as the dogged, determined, and ultimately traumatised Rust Cohle, earning Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his efforts. Then again, Harrelson was every bit as good as his partner Marty Hart and was even shortlisted for the exact same prizes without having to go method.
Their offscreen bond remains nigh-on inseparable, but that doesn’t mean Harrelson wouldn’t get annoyed with McConaughey, especially when he refused to drop character until they were done for the day. As he explained on the SmartLess podcast, physical violence was on his mind more than once.
“I mean, you know, there were times I would get kind of angry with Matthew,” he said. “And he’s one of my best buddies, so it felt weird. But he was in character, and that fucking character just made me want to slap him. He’s so good, but he’d stay in character. You know, not after work, but while we were at work. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, buddy!’ None of that. So that was a little… But, anyway, it turned out good.”
True Detective definitely “turned out good,” earning a rapturous response from critics and quickly going down in the history books as one of the 21st century’s finest standalone television seasons. Whereas Harrelson and Marty were separated every time the cameras stopped rolling, McConaughey and Rust remained symbiotic until it was time to wrap for the day.
There’s no right or wrong way for an actor to approach their craft, even if there’s something blackly hilarious about Harrelson spending months working right next to one of his best friends and never actually getting to spend much time with them at all because of their refusal to break character.
