Natural-Born Killer: Woody Harrelson's Father Infused Actor's Movie Career

March 22, 2007 — -- Actor Woody Harrelson, who rose from playing the dimwitted bartender on television's "Cheers" to a psychopath in "Natural Born Killers," finally put a family skeleton to rest this week with the death of his father -- convicted murderer Charles Harrelson.

The 45-year-old renegade actor always insisted his father was innocent of charges that he killed a federal court judge in Texas and openly supported him throughout his movie career.

"Woody had kind of a rough-hewn image," Michael Musto, gossip columnist for the Village Voice, told ABC News. "There was something very trailer-park about him and his appeal, so his father didn't destroy his career."

Charles Voyde Harrelson -- a reputed professional gambler and hired assassin -- died of an apparent heart attack in his maximum security cell at the Colorado federal prison known as "Supermax." The same facility where Unabomber Ted Kaczynksi is held.

The 69-year-old Harrrelson was convicted of shooting U.S. District Judge John H. Wood, who was killed on his way to work in May 1979. Harrelson was first sent to a prison in Atlanta, but an escape attempt prompted his transfer to Colorado.

Charles Harrelson had been prosecuted four times in three murders and was serving two life sentences. He claimed he had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and some reports assert the actor's father was one of the tramps photographed on the "grassy knoll."

Woody was 7 years old when his father was sent to jail. In some ways the actor's role in "Natural Born Killers" mimicked his father's life -- a victim of a traumatized childhood becomes a serial murderer.

"I'm not saying my father is a saint, but I think he's innocent of that [judge's killing], yeah," Woody Harrelson once told ABC's Barbara Walters.

The colorful actor, who was once married to screenwriter Neil Simon's daughter Nancy, is not the first celebrity to deal with a rogue relative.

Just recently actress Lindsay Lohan's father was released from a New York state prison after serving almost two years for driving while intoxicated and other charges.

"Desperate Housewives" star Teri Hatcher revealed in Vanity Fair last year that her uncle had sexually abused her as a child.