The roles that will always live with Woody Harrelson: “Stay in me forever”
When the director calls cut, the job of the actor is to try and leave it all behind.
It’s a part that few people talk about: the difficulty of trying to get out of the mind of a character you’ve spent time and effort building and embodying. In some cases, they never truly can, and so it goes for Woody Harrelson.
These stories are heard mostly with actors who have taken everything incredibly and intensely serious. Especially for performers who dip into the somewhat questionable practice of method acting, essentially living fully and completely as their character for however long a project takes, not even returning to themselves at the end of the day, where trying to stop at the final cut can become almost impossible.
Just look at how playing Elvis seemed to irreversibly change Austin Butler’s accent, or Jim Carrey’s perspective on the world after playing Charlie Kaufman and feeling like the complex comedian never truly left his psyche to the point of feeling like the man “possessed” him.
But even for actors who have gone full immersion like that sans method, the task of pulling themselves out can prove difficult. Florence Pugh talked about struggling with it after Midsommar, stating, “I felt like I’d left [Dani] in that field in that state. I definitely felt like I’d left her there in that field to be abused”, as she had to leave early to start another project.
Sometimes though, a part of a character sticking with an actor isn’t a distressing thing but can be a benefit. A movie could deliver them a life lesson, or they could feel like they’ve gained new perspectives from the new mindsets a character demands of them. It’s not all doom and gloom.
Harrelson is an example of the sunnier side of things. He felt it especially after wrapping the 1998 film The Hi-Lo Country, stating of his role Big Boy Matson, “Well, he is a talker, no question about that, but he’s also a doer. He gets [stuff] done. He’s got a real sense of adventure about him, a joie de vivre, you know, a real love of life. And he has integrity. To be Big Boy’s friend is to have a profound friendship.”
With only warmth and tenderness towards that character, he was happy to add, “Maybe a piece of Big Boy Matson will stay in me forever, you know, like I feel a piece of Larry Flynt will stay in me,” tacking his role in the biopic The People vs Larry Flynt onto the list.
Flynt is definitely a more complex figure to carry part of him around, “I really came to like him, I don’t think I would’ve been much into doing the movie if I hadn’t come to respect Larry,” Harrelson said as he depicted the infamous pornographer behind publications like Hustler. But he clarified, “I don’t respect much the pornography part of what he does, but what he is as a person, and the rebel that he is”.
Even the most questionable characters can teach an artist something, and as Harrelson has moved through his career, he’s found those two figures embedded deep in his mind long after the set was shut and the film was out.
