Woody Harrelson

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Harrelson is also a world-famous star who doesn't sweat the press release. He's had run-ins with paparazzi and police; has chosen a quiet life in Maui with his nonactress wife, Laura Louie, and their three daughters; and has always put his politics (pro-hemp, antiwar, pro-alternative energy) where you can see them. And he was beating the green drum way before it was trendy. (In Roland Emmerich's 2012, he plays a hippie environmentalist radio host who predicts the end of the world—typecasting?)

ELLE: For all your outspoken politics, it seems as if your character in The Messenger, Captain Tony Stone, is someone you wouldn't even want to have a drink with.

WOODY HARRELSON: Yeah, I do like to go for parts that are outside the scope of what I'd personally be into. It's always been my thing to be like, This war is bullshit, it's an oil war, it's wrong. And I think that perspective, while valid, also lacks validity in the sense that I'd never understood what soldiers went through until I started hanging out with them. These are people who make no money. They're doing it for love of country. I'm not saying everybody has a pure motive—some people just want to shoot shit up—but the people I met seemed to really care.

ELLE: You also come across as someone who cares—about the world, the environment. What's it like being constantly conscious?

WH: It's exhausting. Everything I do, I try to think, Okay, what are the ramifications? Like, with the clothes I wear, I prefer if it's grown organically, because cotton—which is what's used in most clothing—takes up 50 percent of all pesticide use. The other day I asked someone to get me some green tea, and he brought it in a Styrofoam cup. I haven't used Styrofoam in years, literally.

ELLE: Do you ever wish you could stop caring so much?

WH: The only thing that's problematic is the constant explaining, the constant need to kind of go, No, I don't want that because of such and such. I feel like I'm a pain in the ass, and I don't like being difficult.

Harrelson is nothing if not thoughtful. But lest we forget, he can be a total cutup. In the recent Zombieland, he played Tallahassee, a chainsaw-wielding cowboy with two simple goals: killing zombies and eating Twinkies. Costarring with three shiny young'uns (Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin), Harrelson did all the justice in the world to lines such as, "Thank God for rednecks," "Time to nut up or shut up," and "You wanna see how hard I can punch?" (Not to mention this soon-to-be statement T-shirt: "Goddammit, Bill Fucking Murray!")

Harrelson has long been gifted at carrying the burden of great lines; the dead-on deadpan can be traced to Cheers, the masterfully written early-'80s-to-early-'90s sitcom in which he played Woody Boyd, the lovable naïf. (I could recite a dozen of his kickers by heart—e.g., "I'd hate to be the second member of my family buried alive by potatoes"—but Harrelson swears the only line he remembers is, "How are you today, Mr. Peterson?") Boyd was cartoonishly unassuming, but Harrelson gave him more than enough heart and just enough credit to keep the shtick un-shticky.

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