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Then came a string of copycat murders, committed by some self-avowed fans of the film. Aspiring Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole often cited it, along with rap music, as evidence of the country’s moral decay. But unfortunately, whatever momentum Natural Born Killers might have given his career was soon lost to controversy.Īmid the political war brewing over media depictions of violence, Natural Born Killers became an easy scapegoat. It’s the kind of showy, scorched-earth performance that screams for audiences to take an actor seriously, and suddenly, many did. Harrelson shaved off his floppy man-boy hair and laced his amiable drawl with seduction and malice-Woody Boyd as possessed by Charles Manson. #Billionaire ransom movie remake of old movie serial#Oliver Stone cast Harrelson as the serial murderer Mickey Knox in 1994’s Natural Born Killers because, as Stone explains in Matt Zoller Seitz’s The Oliver Stone Experience, he sparked to Harrelson’s “white trash” vibe, a sense of rabid-possum rage lurking beneath that laconic exterior. #Billionaire ransom movie remake of old movie movie#Harrelson’s next movie lead found him leaning into his dimwitted-Adonis persona in order to subvert it. Roger Ebert related a friend’s opinion that, given the choice “between being faithful to Woody Harrelson or sinning with Robert Redford, Bob could keep his million and she’d consider it anyway.” Critic Stephen Hunter went for the jugular: “Architect? You wouldn’t trust this boy to find an outhouse, much less design one.” Director Adrian Lyne had wanted Val Kilmer, but after watching White Men Can’t Jump, he was persuaded that Harrelson could be a viable sexual competitor to Redford. Harrelson tried breaking away from portraying adorable dummies in 1993’s Indecent Proposal, as the tormented young architect who rents out his wife, played by Demi Moore, to Robert Redford’s courtly billionaire. Hoyle was just a street-smart Boyd, playing up the dopey-hick act to con anybody who underestimated him. But it didn’t reveal new facets of his acting. His first major role, as the basketball hustler Billy Hoyle in 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump, which was a critical and commercial hit, confirmed that Harrelson’s charisma translated to the big screen. As he would recall to his friend and fellow Texan Owen Wilson for Interview magazine, “I was on Cheers for eight years, and I couldn’t get another job, and I thought, ‘I’m going to be Woody Boyd forever.’ ” Indeed, Harrelson’s earliest forays into movies were both aided and haunted by Woody Boyd. It was a bold move, considering Harrelson didn’t have many other offers on the table. Harrelson was so popular, he later told GQ, that an NBC executive tried persuading him to keep Cheers going by having Boyd take over the bar. #Billionaire ransom movie remake of old movie plus#NBC/Photofestīy the time Cheers wrapped, in 1993, Woody Boyd had made Woody Harrelson a star, garnering him five Emmy nominations and one win, plus a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most eligible lady-killers. Woody Harrelson played bartender Woody Boyd in the television show Cheers from 1985 to 1993. The two seemed as synonymous as their names. Harrelson even occasionally lapsed into his childhood Texan twang during Boyd’s most egregious country rube moments. Both radiated a sweet simplicity and a charming indifference to their own sex appeal. ![]() ![]() Boyd hailed from Hanover, Indiana, home of Hanover College, Harrelson’s alma mater. The Midland-born sixty-year-old arrived on television screens in 1985 as Cheers’ Woody Boyd, a role that pigeonholed him early as “the cute idiot,” in part because it seemed he was barely acting. ![]() But Harrelson appears most menacing when he simply crooks his gee-whiz grin and softens his usual laid-back pothead lilt into a creepy singsong. There are moments when Kasady unleashes his psychopathic rage, screaming and punching walls. When Kasady isn’t morphing into a snarling extraterrestrial, he looks and sounds a lot like our notion of Woody Harrelson-the kind of polite yet rascally Southern boy that the actor has embodied since he was entertaining his high school classmates with Elvis impressions. Take Venom: Let There Be Carnage, slated at press time for theatrical release this month, in which Harrelson plays the super-villain Carnage, a.k.a. But it’s also easy to underrate Harrelson because his performances feel so unforced. Granted, his off-screen persona as a stoner savant who reels off polemics about industrial hemp in between poker games with Willie Nelson is more intriguing than some of his movie roles. ![]() Throughout his career, the idea of Woody Harrelson has threatened to eclipse his work. ![]()
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