SINS OF THE FATHER

Fans of ‘Cheers’ Actor Stunned by Killer Family Revelation

Fans were surprised when the actor’s family lineage resurfaced online.

Fans were just reminded that actor Woody Harrelson, who gained recognition for his role as bartender Woody Boyd on NBC’s Cheers, has blood ties to organized crime. The Instagram account “historyfeels” posted a carousel about Harrelson’s father, Charles Voyde Harrelson, a hitman and mobster who was convicted of assassinating a federal judge, John H. Wood Jr., in 1979, when Woody was 14. Charles died at 68 in a Fremont maximum security prison in March of 2007, while Woody was working on No Country for Old Men. Woody, 63, told the Financial Times that he didn’t know his father deeply and that he and his two brothers were raised by his mother, Diane Oswald, on a secretary’s wages. Fans commented on their surprise and support for Woody. “Hats off to Woody’s Harrelson for not letting his past personal life dictate his own life and, ultimately, his career as an actor,” one noted. Woody’s family caused intrigue in 2023 when his friend and True Detective co-star Matthew McConaughey speculated that they were half-brothers, claiming McConaughey’s mother was intimate with Charles Harrelson around the time McConaughey was conceived.