Page 125 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

JOSH BROLIN HAD ACCEPTED THAT HE WASN’T GOING TO BE in Hollow Man. It was the end of 1999, the last moments of a decade that had seen many career ups and downs for the veteran actor, and although he had auditioned for Paul Verhoeven’s big-budget, Kevin Bacon–starring sci-fi thriller, the studio didn’t seem to like him in the fairly thankless role of Dr. Matt Kensington, Elisabeth Shue’s boyfriend and Bacon’s second fiddle. It was a story that Brolin, who had just turned 30, was quickly getting used to: “They wanted new people. They wanted the Ben Afflecks and the Matt Damons — the people who blew you away right from the start,” Brolin told me. “I didn’t have that. They thought I was getting mouldy.”
Thirty is hardly old, but in Hollywood, it can be a decisive juncture: by that point, you’ve either made it or you haven’t. Although it’s hard to believe now — as Brolin rounds out a huge marquee cast in this season’s monumental blockbuster Dune: Part Two, kicks off the second season of the acclaimed Amazon Prime series Outer Range, and prepares to release his debut book, all while still reaping the rewards of having played the biggest and baddest villain in the Marvel Universe — there was a time when Brolin was perceived as one of the guys who never made it and probably never would. Brolin said that when he read for Flirting with Disaster, the loopy David O. Russell comedy starring Ben Stiller and Patricia Arquette, the studio, Miramax, was adamantly opposed to hiring him. “They were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we know that guy,’” Brolin said. “That guy is loser territory.”
So when the producers of Hollow Man called Brolin back to tell him they’d reconsidered, he was understandably skeptical. “We rewatched your audition tape,” the producer told Brolin on the phone. “And it’s really good.” Most actors would have been relieved, if not flattered. Brolin didn’t buy it for a second. “They were so full of shit,” he said, roaring with laughter at the bittersweet memory. “The only reason I got that part is that everybody else turned them down. They couldn’t find anybody to do it for cheap enough. Well, I’m your man!” He got the job and gamely played the pretty-boy doctor next to Bacon in the goofy, lurid Verhoeven thriller, doing his best to react
convincingly to empty shots that would be filled with CGI in the editing room. After one particularly rousing take, Bacon even told him he had “some real chops” as an actor. “I was like, ‘This is so sad,’” Brolin laughed.
It’s not that Brolin wasn’t grateful for the opportunity. He was living on his family’s ranch in Templeton, Calif., always struggling to scrape together enough acting work to pay the bills, and a prominent part in a flashy Kevin Bacon movie was a good gig for a working actor. But Brolin had grown up watching his father, the actor James Brolin, bounce from job to job, always hoping for a bigger break that never seemed to materialize; he “had no interest in following that trajectory,” he said. Besides, Brolin was a self-confessed film buff whose north star was Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. His aspirations were a little higher than Dr. Matt Kensington or Derek Bates, the mustachioed, gun-toting treasure hunter he played in 2005 action flick Into the Blue. There’s a scene in that movie in which Brolin holds Jessica Alba at gunpoint. “She said the same fucking thing that Kevin said: ‘Wow, you’ve got some chops!’” Brolin remembered. “I was like, ‘Kill me, man.’”
That’s how Brolin was defined in those days: the bad guy, the boyfriend. Certainly not the movie star, and definitely not Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. Though he got his start in Hollywood early, playing older brother Brand in the beloved adventure movie The Goonies, he couldn’t seem the parlay that success into anything more substantial, finding regular but creatively unsatisfying work on TV in shows such as The Young Riders and Private Eye but not landing many large or interesting film roles. And the longer he languished, the less likely it seemed that things would change. “Especially as time went on, I was being perceived as the guy that should have hit but didn’t,” he explained. “I would go to my agent and I would say, ‘Are my legs too short? Is my head too big? Just tell me the truth! Why am I not working?’”
He learned, if nothing else, that these things are unpredictable. “I know brilliant actors who have only done an El Pollo Loco commercial, and I know shitty actors who are stars. It can happen to anybody at any time. It’s so random.” He uses the example of Anthony Hopkins, who, Brolin said, “was a fine actor who did amazing work, but nobody took any notice until he was
“When you get older, you realize that everybody’s going to give you shit,”
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