Of the numerous all-terrain actors that swarm around Hollywood, Josh Brolin He is one of those chameleons willing to put himself in the shoes of whoever dictates the script. Those born in the seventies grew up with him, after his time in an iconic film like The goonies; but that teenager who questioned none other than Steven Spielberg himself, today is an experienced actor, fifty-six years old, who has gone from the nicest to the most scoundrel in Hollywood over the decades… and has survived. Josh Brolin has written his memoirs, From Under the Trucks. The ‘murderer’ of Harvey Milkthe Thanos of the Avengers or Gurney Halleck in the saga of Dunehas faced his memories, both the noblest and the saddest. Of the death of his mother, Jane Cameron Agee, in a car accident, when he had just turned twenty-seven; to the honesty and rawness with which his stepmother, Barbra Straisand, made him face his rampant alcoholism and put an end to that self-destructive spiral.
© Getty ImagesJosh Brolin’s memoirs are not self-congratulatory nor do they aspire to highlight the “wild side” of show business. Just as they give one of lime they offer another of sand, drawing a fairly accurate panorama of how people lived in that bonfire of vanities that was the Mecca of Cinema. The anecdotes he reveals about Marlon Brando, John Travolta and, above all, Barbra Straisand tell us about a world in which everyone still wanted to lend a hand to emerge undefeated from the daily struggle. For Josh, his addiction to drugs and alcohol almost put a dark end to his career, but he managed to make up for it.
The Brolins: a Hollywood family, like the Barrymores
Josh Brolin was born from the marriage between James Brolin – married for the third time to Barbra Straisand, in 1998 – and Jane Cameron Agee. According to Josh Brolin himself, in The Late Show with David Lettermanhis parents met during the filming of the popular television series dedicated to batmanwhich aired from 1966 to 1968. James played the chauffeur, Ralph Straphylococcus, and Jane Cameron was none other than an aspiring actress at Twentieth Century Fox and the executive responsible for auditions in the series dedicated to the good guy. batman.
© Getty ImagesLike the Barrymores, Drew’s family, also closely linked to Steven Spielberg for his role in the legendary film E.T.Josh Brolin was born into a family that lived from and for “show business.” In fact, his parents baptized him Josh after Josh Randall, the protagonist of an extremely popular series in the sixties, Randall, the vigilante, starring Steve McQueen. Just like Drew Barrymore, the eighties were not an easy time to be a teenager in Hollywood, where all the temptations were so close at hand. He lived through some very turbulent years in which he developed a significant addiction to heroin and, above all, alcohol, his weak point.
At sixteen, his life was already so chaotic that his mother was forced to kick him out of the house, and he ended up taking refuge on the couch in an apartment that his father shared with someone. In this context, Steven Spielberg, a true “savior” for more “broken dolls” of Hollywood, extended his hand to him and, after a complicated casting, gave him a role in the Goonies, although perhaps on more than one occasion he regretted it. for it. Josh Brolin once said that he did not share the vision that the filmmaker had of his character and that he used to argue vehemently about the matter. In the end, Spielberg told him: “Just act. “Just say what’s on the page.” Over the years, he discovered that this simple advice contained a lot of cinematic knowledge: “He was right.”
© Getty ImagesHe has also agreed without disagreement or resentment with Barbra Streisand, one of the few people who confronted him and made him see that he should get off the path he had taken. The popular singer entered his life in the nineties, when she met James Brolin on a blind date in 1996, and they decided to continue walking through life together hand in hand. According to what he said during the promotion of his memoirs, Barbra Streisand was the only one who, on one occasion when he asked for a glass of wine, blurted out: “But aren’t you an alcoholic?” “Barbra is a very direct person. We argued for years. She probably reminded me, in some ways, of a much healthier version of my mother. It was a typical Jewish mother who told me: ‘You can’t do that because it would hurt you. You have to eat. You look too thin,’” he revealed and added how that scuffle between the actress and singer and him ended: “I told her: ‘Look, you’re not going to stop me from doing what I want to do. I’m an adult.’ And she answered me: ‘No. You are an alcoholic. I’m not going to give you wine. Alcoholics cannot drink wine, because it is bad for them.’ I love that level of honesty.”
© Getty ImagesIn this regard, you can read a phrase in his memoirs, partially reproduced in The Sunoh Times, that reveal the origin of the complicated relationship between the actor and alcohol: “I was born to drink. “My mother drank exactly like me and I was raised to be a man and drink like the male equivalent of my mother.” He also flirted with drugs. It is incredible to think that, as he confesses in his book, his first contact with drugs, with marijuana, occurred when he was barely nine years old.
More than a decade sober
In 2013, he made the decision to rehabilitate himself to never return to alcohol. One day, he woke up without remembering what he had done hours before. He only had his hazy image of him arguing in a drive-thru, but he didn’t know the reason or how that fight had ended. That same day, he went to see his grandmother, who was already ninety-nine years old, and was very sick. In front of her, he became aware that he still had at least half of his life to live and that he wanted to be sober to really enjoy it: “I knew this would be the last time I would drink.” When asked the reason for his determination, he replies: “I like getting older. It’s like a great excuse to finally say; ‘Well, relax, you don’t need to be spinning all the time.’”
© Getty ImagesIt is also true that Josh Brolin always wanted to do his job and, above all, he wanted to hide from the eyes of his older children, Trevor and Eden – the result of his six-year marriage to Alice Adair – his addiction to alcohol, something that was not always succeeded. Like his father, he has also said “I do” three times. In addition to Alice, he married actress Diane Lane in 2004 and, since 2016, he has remained with Kathryn Boyd, with whom he has had his two young daughters, Westlyn Reign and Chapel Grace.
A “healer” named John Travolta
It is worth noting that Josh Brolin’s memoirs are not only a tour of his personal and professional life, but also mentions anecdotes that pepper the already marinated history of Hollywood. His account of a picturesque dinner, which included two legends such as Marlon Brando and John Travolta, is very curious. According to Josh Brolin’s description of the events, Marlon Brando came to the meeting with a leg injury. Without hesitation, John Travolta dared to tell the idol, a quasi-god, that he had just finished a course on healing and that he was sure he could help him using his “Scientology powers.” As Brolin writes in his book, everything happened in the living room of Barbra Streisand. Invited to that strange dinner were John Travolta and his wife at the time, Kelly (“gorgeous and super nice”); Marlon Brando with “a redhead he had met on the Internet,” and James Brolin with Barbra.
© Getty ImagesFor Josh Brolin, that evening promised to be very special, because he was a Marlon Brando superfan: “The reason I got into the world of acting was the first movies starring Marlon.” The most admired and beloved godfather on the planet arrived at his appointment with a blue tuxedo, wide pants and a scarf around his neck, but when he got out of the car, he lifted his pants leg and everyone saw how his leg was bleeding: “He explained that he “He had stopped to help people get their cars out of a landslide on the Pacific Coast Highway, and when he was trying to get a car out of the mud, it moved and hit him in the leg with its bumper.”
© Getty ImagesThat’s when John Travolta came into play: “John excitedly told Marlon that he had just finished a course on healing and that he could help him. “John gently took Marlon by the hand and led him towards Barbra’s living room.” At that moment, healing took place: “John put his hand on Marlon’s leg, then his other hand on his chest. Time passed, in silence. Nobody spoke. I was the person furthest from them. I looked. “Marlon Brando and Danny Zuko: this is crazy.” When John Travolta finished his cure, Marlon Brando got up from Barbra Streisand’s couch… and his color was better.
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