Twenty years ago, long before Hollywood jumped on the “green” bandwagon, there was Woody Harrelson.

The public snickered as he waged wars against the government’s clampdown on the hemp industry; scaled the Golden Gate bridge in a logging protest; opened his own oxygen bar, and made documentaries about sustainable living.

But, having made a career out of playing dimwits and morons, Harrelson is anything but dumb.

And while he may look like your average guy next door - the regular, pot-smoking, hemp-advocating, vegetarian, tree-hugging variety, that is - Harrelson is anything but average.

“There’s no sense of ‘I told you so’,” he says. “I’m just glad everybody finally caught on to the fact we’re destroying our planet. Hopefully its not too late.”

Together with wife Laura Louie and their three daughters - Deni, 14, Zoe, 11 and Makani, two - Harrelson, 46, has created his own sustainable paradise on the Hawaiian island of Maui: “It is a dream life. I know I’m privileged to be able to live there, and I love just hanging out; I’ve got the greatest family, and we just have a great time. Its actually heaven,” he says.

“We live in a small solar-powered community - there’s probably about 200 people but in terms of houses maybe 100. People get the idea that it's like a commune but this was a neighbourhood that’s been there long before I got there, and they just never wanted power lines.

“In my community we have no power lines, everybody in the entire neighbourhood is on solar power. Its pretty cool. And there’s so much extra power, its incredible. Solar power makes sense in places where there’s so much sunshine and its starting to be used more and more. I think the solar technology is getting better and better.

“And also, when you have power lines, you’re not off the grid. And its good to be off the grid.

“We run all our vehicles off bio-diesel. We have several cars including a Volkswagon bug. You can put bio-diesel into any diesel engine. Rudolph Diesel meant for the engine to run off vegetable oil. But then the petroleum industry stepped in and took over with synthetic fuels and fossil fuel.”

Surrounded by the four women in his life, Harrelson says he wouldn’t have it any other way: “Its incredible. I mean I’ve got three daughters, then there’s the wife and the nanny, and my dog is female and two kittens that are female. There’s so much feminine energy around. I kind of wouldn’t have it any other way.

"I feel just like I’m drop-smack in the middle of all these amazing goddesses who are just extraordinary people,” says the actor who, together with his family, enjoys a vegan lifestyle.

“I decided in 1990 that I was done eating animal products although I’d stopped eating red meat a couple of years before that. My kids are all vegan and have no interest in places like McDonalds.

"They don’t even want to eat that stuff. They understand. Like most people, you look at what you get out of the freezer and it doesn’t look anything like cow. How do you know that’s even a cow? You don’t! These kids understand that so they don’t get tempted.

“The thing that does kinda tempt them is sugar. But I tell them ‘Sugar’s not a bad thing. Your body does run on simple sugar but its just refined sugar that’s bad for you.’ So they understand that and they grasp all the concepts and they eat pretty good. They’re as healthy as can be.”

The Harrelsons have no TV in their home although they recently became hooked on Ugly Betty after the childrens’ godmother Salma Hayek, executive producer of the show, sent them every episode on DVD.

A committed environmentalist, Harrelson finds it hard to get too excited about the forthcoming US elections: “Its hard to believe there’s going to be much evolution in politics from within. I just think the system is just so corrupt that even if you get a guy like Jimmy Carter, who was the president who cared, there’s little change.

"And after Carter levied a windfall profits tax on the oil companies who were gouging us just like they are now - of course now the record profits are beyond anything - they made sure he didn’t sit another term. Then came Reagan-ism and then Bush, and now we’re still stuck in this Bush-like quagmire nightmare. I like Obama. He seems a little more outside the norm.”  

Having first made us laugh more than two decades ago as Cheers’ loveable but naive bartender Woody Boyd, Harrelson parlayed his popularity into a series of dramatic roles in films No Country For Old Men, Indecent Proposal, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Natural Born Killers, although he says he can never stay too far away from his first love: comedy.

“I don’t know why I get distracted into these dramatic things. Isn’t it better just to make people laugh? If you can? God forbid. How much longer do I have before I stop making people laugh?

"I might be not funny in about three years! I might be not funny now, actually...” muses the former construction worker whose taking no chances, recently completing filming two further comedies; co-starring with Jennifer Aniston in romantic comedy Management and with Katie Holmes in The Other Side.

And just in case he finds he’s no longer funny, he’s hedging his bets, starring in upcoming dramas Seven Pounds with Will Smith and Pinkville with Bruce Willis.

“I’ve been lucky to get to try different things although I’ve always enjoyed comedy the most,” he says.

In his private life, too, Harrelson prefers the company of those people who make him laugh, most notably Owen Wilson with whom he’s regularly photographed surfing on the beach close to his Hawaiian home.

“Owen is going gang-busters. A complete recovery from the depression he was in. He might be the greatest guy I know. I love him. He has a tremendous heart and a tremendous mind. He’s a sweet guy,” says the actor whose tempted to make a TV show based around his funny friends which also include country legend Willie Nelson.

“After Cheers, whenever anyone asked me if I’d like to do another sitcom, for the longest time I’d say ‘No way’ because its a big commitment. A seven year commitment if it goes well, and then if it goes bad, that’s even worse. Right?

"So I never thought I’d be into that but lately I’ve been thinking of doing something semi-based on my life - not exactly a reality show - but kinda like based on some of my friends. I’ve got this great quirky collection of friends,” he says, releasing a giggle which sounds uncannily similar to that another funny TV guy, Spongebob Squarepants.

“I tend to collect my friends based on how much they make me laugh. My best friends are the ones who make me laugh the most so I think that’s a pretty good criteria for what you want from people.

"I’m telling you, I’ve got some people who when you’re with them, its almost a guarantee that they’re going to bring you down. I try to spend less time with them,” says the actor who looks nothing like your conventional Hollywood star, with his balding head, wide pale blue eyes and crooked nose and crumpled khaki pants, hemp shirt and flip-flops.

An admitted former sex addict who once famously said:  "Monogamy is one of the most confusing things about getting married. I don't understand marriage in the traditional sense. I won't sign a piece of paper that implies I'm bound to one person and can't physically be with anyone else," Harrelson surprised himself ten years ago by marrying his long-time love Laura Louie, mother of his three girls.

At a loss to explain his change of heart, he says shyly: “Actually, I love her - she’s great, and I’ve never had a problem with the notion of two people getting up and declaring their love for each other.

"It’s just all the influences of church and state that I feel are inappropriate. My wife is about the coolest gal I’ve met in my entire life. I’m not saying everything’s perfect by any stretch, but you do want to be with someone who inspires you, and she inspires me.

“She is just the most amazing woman I ever met – beautiful, mysterious, sensual, exotic and revolutionary and magical. Her parents are Chinese but she grew up in California,” says the actor who met his future bride after hiring her as an assistant on the set of Cheers in 1987.

“I don’t view our marriage as an institution. We did not get married in the ‘to have and to hold, until death do us part’ fashion, where the church and the government say everything is OK. That wasn’t our intention. But the ritual is, I think, a pretty cool ritual. The time that we have together is all we demand of each other.”

If it would be easy for Harrelson to sit back and be smug about his success and enviable lifestyle, instead, he’s nothing but grateful: “To do Cheers and then have a life after that is like winning the lottery twice, and I am grateful. I mean, lets be honest, I ain’t no Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt,” points out the actor who once attended reform school, drifting in and out of 17 jobs over the course of one year.

“Woody Boyd is probably closer to my soul than anything I’ve ever done. I had a ball playing him.”

And there’s no arguing with him when he says: “My life has been a long strange trip.”