Woody Harrelson spoke with Forbes while promoting Out Of The Furnace, but he snuck in some choice tidbits about Catching Fire along the way. From Forbes:
Having The Hunger Games as this ongoing series of films in your career, what sort of itch does Out of the Furnace scratch in comparison to that?
I mean, I don’t really compare them. I mean, it’s just – I turned Hunger Games down, twice! I’m the only one that’s such a fool to turn that thing down, and it’s been the greatest single thing that I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of, not just for the huge success of it, but for those people who are involved in it. I mean, I love those guys, man. I mean, it is like a family. It is so tight, so fun, we all love hanging out with each other outside the set, and we’re just laughing all day long on the set. I can’t imagine anything more fun. And because of it I’ve got to meet a lot of people I never would have, like tweens, coming up and wanting an autograph. I’m like, they never would have come up to me! They never would have seen anything I’d done. So it was really – that’s a cool thing as well. But it’s not like I think, I’m not one of those guys who say, “I do these… so that I can do the smaller movies.” I don’t do anything like that. I just take things as they come, and the fact that they keep coming is shocking, but I’m certainly happy to be a part of it.
You have a great character to play in The Hunger Games, but you didn’t look at that and go, this is probably going to be pretty successful?
Oh yeah, but that wasn’t my motivator, you know. I’m talking about times that I, you know, decided to do something because specifically because this is going to do well. A bad, bad decision – that’s something I would caution any actor against. It’s much better to say I liked this script and I really liked this character and I liked the director. I liked the other actors – whatever. But to say, oh, this will be successful, and that’s why I want to do it, that’s not good. But yeah, Hunger Games, everybody thought the odds were pretty good that people would go see it, and thank God they were right.
