He’s coming clean. The War for the Planet of the Apes star Woody Harrelson opened up about his 2002 infamous drunken night of infidelity and what he described as the “worst night of his life” in a sit-down interview with the Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday, July 12.
The Hunger Games alum, 55, who was dating Laura Louie at the time (they married in 2008), was drinking at bar in London when two females propositioned the actor to “take a walk on the wild side.” As the trio entered the car, a third woman got in.
“We went to my place, and one of the girls was a razzi [paparazzi] or worked for them, worked for the rags. And she got a photographer to come out,” he explained. “I was bummed when they all left together ’cause I knew it was going to happen [an article]. News of the World, it was. I never read it ’cause I didn’t want to read it.”
The Emmy Award-winning actor revealed that while he didn’t tell his wife of the incident, she found out from someone else.
“Laura — this really gives you a sense of the depth of her compassion — what she said to me after finding out was, ‘That must be really hard for you, to have this s–t exposed.’ She just said that,” Harrelson recalled. “Now that doesn’t mean she wasn’t upset. How did I apologize? You know, just your standard Texan grovel. But she forgave me, and we’re still together.”
Harrelson met his wife 1987. Louie worked for Harrelson as his assistant for nearly 3 years before the pair began a romantic relationship. The duo share three children together.
In the same week as Harrelson’s indiscretion, the Cheers alum got into a heated confrontation with a London cab driver after an ashtray dislodged and he wasn’t able to fix it.
The taxi driver, who had placed a call to the authorities during the dispute, tried to keep the actor in the vehicle, but Harrelson was able to escape. The driver followed the Now You See Me alum on foot until the police arrived. Harrison continued to run and was later arrested.
It was Louie who came to bail the actor out.
“It stayed with me because it was one of the worst nights of my life. I wanted to repress it, I wanted to erase it. I would’ve paid a large sum to just excise that week from my life — the tabloid thing, the incident with the cops,” Harrelson said.
The Oscar-nominated actor leaned on his past missteps while working on the film Lost In London — a project that Harrelson wrote and directed. The film screened earlier this year.
Speaking about the film, Harrelson revealed: “It was this big catharsis. It actually did shift something in me, getting that film done. I feel like it was a purging or a letting go and a letting go of some of the guilt. I know that Laura really loves the movie, and that probably means more than anything. Because in a way, it’s a love letter to Laura, a weird love letter to Laura.”
