Woody Harrelson became famous 30 years ago when, still in his early 20s, he joined the cast of the TV comedy series Cheers as the goofy, grinning bartender Woody Boyd from Hanover, Indiana. He seemed to be a simple, friendly small-town boy, somewhat out of his depth in the big city. During the 1990s his public and private personae rapidly changed. He became known as a reckless hard drinker and an outspoken political activist, whose father was a contract killer serving a life sentence for murdering a federal judge. On screen he played increasingly complex and darker roles, some of them bizarre variations on the Woody character (basketball hustler in White Men Can't Jump; psychotic criminal in Natural Born Killers), others reaching out in quite different directions (the pornographer with a civil rights mission in The People vs Larry Flynt; the gay Washington gigolo in The Walker). Ingratiation with popular audiences...
- 2/26/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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