From ‘Apes’ to ‘Castle,’ actor covers range of roles
NEW YORK — The day was gray and drizzly outside the Time Warner Center, but actor Woody Harrelson was as bright as a rainbow in his yellow T-shirt and cobalt cap.
Fittingly, then, his latest character — the quixotic Rex Walls in “The Glass Castle,” which opened Friday in theaters — is a man described as having “a lot of colors.”
Adapted from Jeannette Walls’ best-selling 2005 memoir, the film recounts life on the lam with her father, an alcoholic nomad who hauled his wife and four children (Brie Larson plays the author as an adult) from state to state, outrunning debt collectors, law enforcement and his own haunted memories.
“He could be the greatest guy, and then he’d go on a bender and do some really rash things that were almost unpardonable,” said Harrelson, 56, whose own childhood was famously complicated. (His father, Charles Harrelson, was convicted of murdering a federal judge and died in prison.)
“The lightness and the dark, he was just fighting it,” he added.
Harrelson talked recently about the film and various other topics.
No child really escapes his parents unscathed, but did you draw on your own experiences to play Rex?
I definitely relate to Rex in a lot of ways. I admire that zest for life. He doesn’t feel like kids need regular schooling. He thinks that they can be schooled by experience, and I’ve often been a fan of that philosophy. I don’t think I learned much sitting in a chair getting lectured for 12 years, you know what I mean?
You and your wife, Laura Louie, have three daughters: Deni, 24; Zoe, 20; and Makani, 11. What was your child-rearing philosophy?
For a long time, they’d come with me wherever I went. Then they got into a really good school, and that
was the end of traveling everywhere with Daddy. It was kind of unfair to them and me. But on the other hand, I could have been working less.
At one point, you moved your family to Costa Rica.
That was in the mid- to late ' 90s, until I ran into Willie Nelson, and he’s like, “Hey, come on out to Maui.” The next thing you know, I’m moving to Maui.
Woody and Willie. One can only imagine.
He’s maybe the greatest guy alive. When he’s there, I see him pretty much every day. He came out to do “Lost in London,” which was really nice.
That’s your live movie from January?
It was a wild concept. I had this horrifying, terrible night that started with my wife and I heading out to this club with a prince. We got in a taxi, and the next thing you
know I’m getting into an argument with the taxi driver over some stupid stuff — an ashtray, actually. And then I leave the taxi, not on good terms, and he calls the cops. So I’m running from the cops.
And this really happened?
It really happened. And then I ended up in jail, so you can imagine I wanted to forget it, but I kept thinking about it.
There’s something in this story — a guy who has it all but didn’t really see it until he’s threatened with losing it, and then this shot of redemption. In that sense, it’s kind of like one of my favorite movies with Jimmy Stewart, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I wish I were half the actor he is. I decided to make it my directing debut, and then I thought, geez, I can shoot this in real time. I livestreamed it into three cinemas in London. It was 2 in the morning when we started, and they were packed.
In “War for the
Planet of the Apes,” you play a colonel with a God complex. Some have cited a resemblance to the president.
Well, we shot this long before there was any notion that this guy was going to be president. Nobody could have imagined it back then. I wasn’t thinking of myself as a presidential deity. Can you imagine if God was like that? Just like a crass, vulgar, self- centered, narcissistic — I mean, my God.
You wear a major prosthetic in Rob Reiner’s coming “LBJ.” Did that help you buy into your own performance?
I went to the tippy- top of the prosthetics pyramid and got the best people. The prosthetics couldn’t be cheap or look fake, and Rob’s just like, “Whatever you need.” The prosthetics go from below the neck all the way up to the ears, nose, everything. It wasn’t what helped me move into the role, but it will help you not to think it is (expletive).