Reliability is not the same thing as predictability. Just look at Woody Harrelson. For more than three decades now, no actor in Hollywood has been as consistently reliable or consistently unpredictable. Not that longevity is the same thing as reliability, either, though it’s funny how often they go together.
Harrelson’s latest movie, “Wilson,’’ opens Friday. He plays the title character, a profoundly cranky divorced man who doesn’t understand the concept of social boundaries.
Twenty years ago, in “The People vs. Larry Flynt’’ (1996), Harrelson played a title character who doesn’t understood social boundaries of a very different sort. Wearing a frizzy wig, Harrelson looks like an elongated James Caan. He got his first Oscar nomination, for best actor. More often, he’s played supporting roles. Probably more people have seen him as Haymitch Abernathy, in the four “Hunger Game’’ movies (2013-2015), than as any other character.
Well, not as many as have seen Harrelson as Woody Boyd during nine seasons on “Cheers’’ (1985-1993). That’s an awful lot of everybody knowing your name. How does a young actor survive overexposure like that? Those two words again: reliability and unpredictability. Woody Boyd, doofus Boston bartender, is about as far as you can get from Harrelson’s Marty Hart, skanky Louisiana cop, in “True Detective’’ (2014), and still be in the same galaxy.
Harrelson does drama. In “The Messenger’’ (2009), playing an Army captain whose job is notifying next of kin when a soldier has died in combat, he earned his other Oscar nomination, this time for supporting actor. He does comedy. “Zombieland,’’ with Harrelson toting a sawed-off shotgun and putting a hop into the walk of any walking dead unlucky enough to cross his path, came out the same year as “The Messenger.’’ Now that’s unpredictability.
Unusual as these characters are, none may be as unusual as the actor who plays them. The son of a convicted murderer – yes, that’s right, murderer — Harrelson’s an outspoken supporter of legalizing marijuana, a self-proclaimed anarchist, and (most subversive of all?) longtime vegan.
Harrelson was in no fewer than five movies last year. He played a police detective in “Triple 9’’; an illusionist and his comically arch identical twin in “Now You See Me 2’’; a cult leader in “The Duel’’; Lyndon Johnson in “LBJ’’; and in “The Edge of Seventeen’’ a high school teacher who’s half sarcastic burnout, half surrogate father to Hailee Steinfeld. Even in the same movie you don’t know what to expect from Harrelson — other than that whatever it is he’s going to do he’s going to do it well.
He’s good with a basketball (“White Men Can’t Jump,’’ 1992; “Semi-Pro,’’ 2008). He’s good with a bowling ball (“Kingpin,’’ 1996). He’s startlingly good in a tuxedo (playing a gay socialite caught up in a murder, “The Walker,’’ 2007). Less of a surprise, he’s good in a 10-gallon hat. That’s true whether he’s wearing it in New York (“The Cowboy Way,’’ 1994), singing duets with John C. Reilly (“A Prairie Home Companion,’’ 2006) or running afoul of Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh (“No Country for Old Men,’’ 2007).
Type “Woody Harrelson’’ into the Internet Movie Database search box, and that last one is the movie that comes up alongside his name. In one way, this makes no sense. Fourth-billed, Harrelson’s on screen for all of seven minutes: four scenes, in only two of which he speaks. Yet that doesn’t keep Harrelson from making an indelible impression.
The marvel of his performance as Carson Wells is how, within those seven minutes, Harrelson makes you believe that this professional hit man might well be a match for a killing machine like Chigurh — and then makes you believe it when he most definitely is not.
“Wilson’’ is based on Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel, and even at his most serious there’s something faintly cartoonish about Harrelson. He looks a bit like an older, (somewhat) more sedate Rob Gronkowski. No, it’s true: that long face, that big nose and bigger jaw, the high forehead, the deep-set eyes.
The effect is a bit clownish, something Harrelson’s romantic-lead blue eyes and winningly complicit smile never quite hide. Yet clownishness can be a useful thing for an actor. It encourages underestimation. “This is the face of hope,’’ Harrelson says to Steinfeld in “The Edge of Seventeen.’’ He means it as a joke — but is it?
That slightly goofy appearance joins with his Texas twang to give Harrelson an innate amiability. That comes in handy when he plays someone repellent, something he’s done surprisingly often. The murderous Mickey Knox, in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers’’ (1994) is the most obvious example, not that Larry Flynt ever won any popularity contests. But that’s the other thing: Inside Woody Harrelson there’s this thick streak of nasty. Even when he plays dumb, he never plays innocent.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
