Woody Harrelson remembers ‘White Men Can’t Jump’

Woody Harrelson’s career was going at full steam by the time 1993 rolled around.

The Midland, Tex.-born actor had risen to fame, of course, as the dim-witted but lovable bartender he shared a name with on Cheers (1985-1983) alongside Ted Danson, Shelley Long and company. He’d been a high school football player on a team coached by Goldie Hawn in Wildcats (1986), and hustled his way around L.A. basketball courts with Wesley Snipes in White Men Can’t Jump (1992).

Rarely, though, as he worked on these projects — with these famed co-stars — did Woody’s mother, Diane, come see him at work.

That all changed when Harrelson was hired on Indecent Proposal, the hit romantic drama released in theaters 30 years ago Sunday.

Robert Redford and Woody Harrelson in 1993’s Indecent Proposal. (Photo: Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)

Harrelson and Demi Moore starred as high school sweethearts David and Diana, whose marriage is put to the test as they’re vacationing in Las Vegas when a wealthy stranger played by Robert Redford offers them one million dollars to spend the night with Diana.

“My mom was pretty psyched,” Harrelson told us during a Role Recall interview (watch above, with Indecent Proposal starting at 3:07).

“She didn’t come to visit me on set much [but] when Robert Redford was in the movie, she came to set for sure. She was like a little girl, like a little school girl. It was fantastic.”

Woody Harrelson and mother Diane Harrelson at the premiere of White Man Can’t Jump. (Photo: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Redford fanning out aside, Harrelson has often praised his mother in interviews.

“I do feel she was a great influence on me and instilled a lot of good values,” he told the Guardian in 2018. “Just the way you treat people, behaving honorably, which I don’t always do, but she was a great role model for that and still is.”

Harrelson was raised mostly solo by his mother, who moved the family to Ohio after his father, Charles, a professional hitman, was incarcerated for murdering a grain dealer. Charles Harrelson was later sentenced to life in prison for assassinating a district judge, and died in 2007.

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