Like Larry Flynt, Woody Harrelson has put his name, wallet, and civil liberties on the line standing up for something he believes in -- the legalization of industrial hemp. Back in June, Harrelson was arrested in Kentucky for planting four hemp seeds as a symbolic act to promote the plant's usefulness as a crop. 

Dressed conservatively in a sand-colored oxford shirt and charcoal gray suit coat, Harrelson surprised all by revealing that the coat was made from hemp. Harrelson eloquently explained his involvement with promoting hemp and its products. I haven't gone out trying to get marijuana legalized. I've been trying to get industrial hemp legalized, which is its non-psychoactive, less than 1% THC cousin. This is made of hemp [grabbing his own lapels], and you can't smoke it. It's a very important issue, because in this country they're cutting down 50 million trees a year for paper . . . and it goes on. 96% of the world's forests have been devastated, and half of it's for paper, and up 'til the late 1800s most paper was made from hemp. I don't want to get off on the whole hemp thing here because we're talking  about the movie, but it does feel good to stand up for something you believe in. It's important that this country and the industries in this country retool -- we're a petroleum-, nuclear-, pesticide-, mining-based country, and it's wrong, because we're destroying the world." 

Along with civil disobedience, Harrelson supports boycotting as a method of getting one's message out. He even, surprisingly, sides with the actions of former Senator Bob Dole who "called for a boycott of two of the last three movies I've been in. . . . I think that it's okay to boycott . . . I think that's a great way to get a message across. If you don't like something, then boycott it . . . we should do that more in this country." 

Harrelson draws the line when boycott leads to litigation, such as Jerry Falwell's case against Larry Flynt. Harrelson has felt such pressure indirectly through his involvement in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which novelist John Grisham says caused the death of two family friends who were the victims of an alleged copy-cat killing based on the film. Grisham has threatened to sue Stone for making the film, but so far has not acted on the threat. Harrelson says, "I think when guys like John Grisham are talking about bringing a movie to court, then that's a really scary thing -- that's censorship." 

In the first week of December, Harrelson was arrested alongside other environmental activists who climbed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge to protest the logging of a redwood grove in Northern California.