The only movie Woody Harrelson walked out of: “I just didn’t like it”
Most actors will be left horrified by at least one movie they make during their careers, but when Woody Harrelson stormed out of his own screening, it didn’t take him long to realise the error of his ways.
As one of his generation’s most prolific character actors and occasional leading men, who appeared onscreen five times in 2025 alone, Harrelson is not immune to a shit film or two. However, the one that left him so upset is undoubtedly one of his better efforts, as well as among the most beloved.
He’d have had every right to tuck tail and vanish halfway through the premiere of Netflix’s The Electric State, because it’s awful. He’d have been well within his rights to do the same for After the Sunset, too, but at least he admitted that one was crap and confessed that he’d only made it for the money.
To be fair, audiences weren’t too enamoured when the picture hit the big screen, either. However, in the three decades since, it’s become a firm cult classic. Not everyone was receptive to the Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin in the summer of 1996, and it turned out that Harrelson was one of them.
“There was a lot of stuff I thought was great that got cut,” he informed Backstage. “And I just didn’t like it; I didn’t think it was funny.” Having abandoned the screening well before the credits rolled, he then avoided the movie for years, despite Peter Farrelly insisting that it was worth giving a second chance.
Eventually, his resistance was broken, and in 2018, more than 20 years after he and Bill Murray went toe-to-toe in what might be cinema’s greatest ever bowling comedy, unless you want to count The Big Lebowski on a technicality, Harrelson sat down, fired up Kingpin, and was instantly a changed man.
“I was like, ‘Goddamn, this movie’s fantastic!'” he confessed. “And I immediately called Petey to apologise.” It only took him two decades, but he was finally on the same wavelength as the rest of the viewers who’ve come to know and love Kingpin and its ridiculousness; it’s a damned fine farce.
Unlike Murray, though, he was genuinely crap at bowling. Whereas his illustrious co-star bowled a perfect game on-camera, much to everyone’s shock and amazement, the Farrellys revealed that Harrelson needed a stunt bowler for the majority of his scenes because he had zero aptitude whatsoever.
He must have felt like an idiot, holding a grudge against Kingpin for over 20 years, based entirely on a visceral first reaction that made him storm out of the cinema. Farrelly eventually wore him down, and he quickly discovered that the co-director was right all along.
