The 2017 movie role Woody Harrelson wouldn’t wish on anyone: “Unless I didn’t like them”
Actors can often be a spiteful bunch, and while Woody Harrelson wouldn’t be the first name that comes to mind, he did play a role so challenging that he’d only wish it upon his worst enemies.
Any contemporaries that he appreciates or admires? He’d advise them to stay well clear, but for anyone unfortunate enough to be on Harrelson’s shit-list who came to him for advice? He’d take the opposite route, and tell them that it was an experience worth having.
For someone with four decades of experience in the industry, he hasn’t made a lot of enemies. There was some backlash to his title role in The People vs Larry Flynt, which didn’t stop him from getting on the Academy Awards shortlist for ‘Best Actor’, but it still affected him so much that it damaged his career.
There was also his odd feud with Quentin Tarantino, which you can’t really call a feud because it was based entirely on Harrelson resenting the filmmaker from afar until they actually met and quickly resolved their differences, so by and large, the three-time Oscar nominee hasn’t been known for ruffling feathers.
Not in a professional capacity, anyway. In his personal life, he’s had a few run-ins with the law, and one of them made such an indelible impression that the star turned it into his most arduous undertaking, adopting a novel approach to the biopic with his experimental 2017 effort, Lost in London.
Based on a wayward evening that saw him spend the night in jail after being chased by the police in a taxi after causing some property damage following a night out, Harrelson decided to channel it in his art by writing, directing, producing, and starring in a live recreation of the incident, which was shot and screened live, making history as the first live feature-length production to be shown in cinemas.
As far as directorial debuts go, it was nothing if not ambitious, and after recreating a headline-grabbing event from his recent past in the name of entertainment, he discovered that capturing a single-take, 100-minute movie was even more difficult than he’d anticipated, and he wouldn’t do it again.
In fact, he wouldn’t want anyone to do it again, with a caveat. “If someone was thinking of doing it, then all they would need to do is talk to me, and I would talk them out of it,” Harrelson offered, before adding the aforementioned caveat. “Unless I didn’t like them.”
In theory, then, if someone was thinking of shooting a live movie of their own and they had no idea that the person they were going to for advice couldn’t stand them, he’d tell them it was a fulfilling experience that they wouldn’t regret in the slightest, but it doesn’t look as though Harrelson has ever gotten that call.
