15 Celebrities With Shockingly Tragic Pasts

3. Woody Harrelson

The actor has been building his reputation of an on-screen-bad-boy by playing numerous evil and deranged characters.

He has been particularly successful playing gruesome, shady and violently psychotic characters.

Remember Mickey in a classic called “Natural Born Killers”, also crazy Charlie in “Seven Psychopaths” or hypocritically religious and morally challenged investigator Marty in a recent hit series “True Detective”?

Is it possible that he nails these parts because he is simply gleaning the experience from his own past?

Namely, it turns out that Woody Harrelson’s father, Charles Voyde Harrelson, was in fact a contract killer. He was convicted of killing U.S. District Judge John H. Wood, and grain dealer Sam Degalia, Jr., for a sum of money – so, by definition Charles was a true hitman.

Charles served 15 years in prison for killing Sam Degalia in 1973, but was paroled and released from prison after only 5 years. One year later, he was arrested for allegedly killing Judge John Wood.

Charles denied having killed the Judge, claiming he was in Detroit at the time. However, a taped conversation between Joe Chagra and Jamiel Chagra revealed that Charles Harrelson had himself claimed to have killed the judge.

Woody reportedly didn’t have any contact with his father between 1968 and 1981, but after Charles got arrested and ended up in prison serving his sentence, Woody frequently visited him and even tried to get him a new trial, but failed to do so.

Charles Harrelson died of natural causes in his maximum security cell on March 15, 2007.