The role Woody Harrelson called painfully unnatural: “I have never wanted to shed a character so badly in my life”
While his versatility has been integral to keeping Woody Harrelson busy as one of the industry’s most dependable character actors for decades, sometimes he disappears so deeply into a role that he can’t wait for production to be over with.
It’s a testament to his abilities as a performer that so many of his most famous roles have been as far away from his real-life personality as possible, with Harrelson always coming across as an easy-going and affable chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly unless he really had to.
And yet, whether it’s politically-charged black comedy Wag the Dog, salacious biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt, war drama The Messenger, crime story Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, or the classic No Country for Old Men, he could never be accused of being one of those stars who built their career on the back of relentlessly playing themselves.
There’s been a fair bit of that, but there’s no shame in Harrelson favouring light-hearted and goofy comedy when he’s so good at it. However, when he was tasked to play a sociopathic drug dealer in a hard-boiled thriller that deftly combined the neo-Western with film noir, it wasn’t the easiest experience of his professional life by any stretch.
In Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace, Harrelson goes against the grain as a vicious crime boss, a role he was glad to see the back of. After describing the process of acting as being “basically in a state of dynamic relaxation,” he admitted how he “didn’t feel there was anything natural about playing Harlan DeGroat.”
It turns out he was underselling it quite dramatically, as director Cooper explained. “The very last shot of the film was the very first scene we shot at the drive-in,” he told We Are Movie Geeks. “When we wrapped, Woody walked over to me and hugged me and he said, ‘I have never wanted to shed a character so badly in my life.'” It was a taxing antagonist to fully embody, leaving Harrelson thrilled that he was able to put it behind him when the cameras stopped rolling.
The filmmaker wanted DeGroat to “represent the very worst of America,” a task Harrelson managed with aplomb. Not that it was an easy part to play, especially when the actor was so desperate to distance himself from DeGroat the second Cooper called it a wrap on Out of the Furnace.
It’s not the sort of character anybody should expect to see him play again, then, even if he proved himself to be a suitably terrifying antagonist. DeGroat was the polar opposite of Harrelson in every respect, leaving him beyond relieved when he was able to wash his hands of the part.
