ThisFilmIsOn

Every so often you’ll turn on the TV and see some actor bitching about how they’ve been type cast or how Tom Hanks steals all the good roles. Ninety eight percent of the time this actor is not very good. The other two percent of the time you’ll be watching an interview with Gary Sinise. Even now, when movie stars seem to be ten a penny, there are very few true renaissance men. Woody Harrelson is one such man.

Whilst he may not have the conventional good looks of a Clooney or a Jackman his more earthy persona has allowed him to ghost almost entirely under the radar for the lion’s share of three decades.
Since his career began back in the mid eighties with a small role in the Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats Harrelson has portrayed all manner of individuals. Cops and Killers, bowlers and ballers. As most people know, Woody really hit the big time in Boston based sitcom Cheers where he played a below average bar man called… Woody. For those of you too young to have ever wanted to go ‘where everybody knows your name’ Cheers was a bit like friends only better and more eighties.

As Jennifer Aniston will no doubt testify trying to carve out a movie career after a stint on a hugely popular sitcom can actually be harder than you think. Yes your desk may be piled high with scripts but chances are most of the parts will bare only the slightest of deviations from your small screen role. Now, pay attention Aniston, the way Harrelson shrugged off the shackles of sitcom stardom was by following up Cheers’ lovable bar man with a psychopathic serial killer called Mickey Knox.

Released only one year after Cheers closed it’s doors for good Natural Born Killers was the perfect juxtaposition for Harrelson who was cast by Oliver Stone because he was seemingly ‘less intimidating’ than the other actors. Wonderfully for Stone the movie was both garnered both acclaim and outrage as Republican’s all over the U.S. denounced the film for its ‘promotion’ of violence. With this perfect combination of publicity and condemnation N.B.K strolled past its modest budget and made bonafide movie stars out of it’s intense leads, Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.

Two years and a variety of films later Harrelson received the first of two Oscar nominations playing the titular role in Milos Forman’s The People Vs. Larry Flynt. Whilst a pornographer turned civil rights campaigner has ‘academy recognition’ stamped all over it the role was passed on by both Tom Hanks and “Bill Fucking Murray!” Fearlessly Harrelson stepped up to the plate and delivered a performance so truthful and intense that most people forget that Ed Norton is even in the film.

Harrelson spent the next decade lending his talents to smaller but no less compelling bit parts. Whilst not the lead in movies such as Wag the Dog, The Thin Red Line, A Scanner Darkly, Seven Pounds and No Country for Old Men Harrelson has proved versatility time and time again. In this time he even managed to squeeze in a guest appearance on Cheers spin off Frasier, bringing back Woody Boyd to the small screen one last time.
Finally, in the last year or so, Harrelson’s stint as an A list supporting actor has come to an end and he is once again making waves as a deserving lead. In 2009 Harrelson was the star of three excellent, yet typically distinct movies.

In Defendor he portrayed an average guy who manages to convince himself he is in fact a superhero, (Think indie circuit Kick-Ass). In a parallel universe some where this role would have ended up as a Ryan Reynolds movie and whilst it probably would have received a more comprehensive cinematic release it would have been all the worse for it. Harrelson’s performance is subtle and unnerving which leads to an overwhelming sense of respect for the hugely misguided Arthur Poppington.
This is of course absolutely nothing like his role in the more box office friendly Zombieland. Whilst he is not strictly speaking the lead, it is Harrelson’s ‘Tallahassee’ who all the cool kids want to be.

He’s the perfect cocktail of bravery and sadism and with a sequel in the pipeline he may well prove to be the Jack Sparrow of the franchise.

Of course, as I said earlier, Harrelson has received two Oscar nom’s and thirteen years after his first the Academy finally woke up. Although he was nominated in the supporting role The Messenger is much more of a two hander. Ben Foster, who himself is proving to be a gifted and versatile actor, benefits from the same on screen intensity that has drawn career best performances from a number of Harrelson’s past co-stars. The highly politicised subject matter which commands the narrative of The Messenger could have fallen horribly flat had it been placed in incapable hands but thankfully with Harrelson and Foster commandeering the great majority of the screen time the product is as insightful as it is heart wrenching and whilst I wouldn’t say Christophe Waltz did not deserve his Oscar I will say that I think Harrelson was unlucky.

Whilst it would be nice to see praise more lavishly bestowed upon this renaissance man I suppose that there’s always the possibility that such commendation could hinder Harrelson’s ability to transcend genres and deliver those equally effective, yet more minor roles which he has spent twenty years perfecting. Hopefully somewhere down the line he’ll get that solid gold statuette that, in my mind at least, he thoroughly deserves. I just hope it doesn’t come at the expense of those solid gold performances.
Watch the video below for some self reflection, Woody Style!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXvr3Holxds