Josh Brolin

• 1. Introduction

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  Josh Brolin was trading stocks full time in 2006 when he booked the lead role in the Coen brothers' Academy Award-winning film No Country for Old Men. The film became both a critical and a commercial success. Brolin is an American actor and the son of actor James Brolin. He had been famous as a young performer and then spent years in an uneven stretch of work that he himself judged harshly. How does a teenage star of an adventure film end up as a full-time trader? What kind of childhood shaped him, and what did it cost the people around him? And how does an actor with that history end up lending his face and voice to one of the biggest villains in modern cinema?

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• 2. Cito Rats

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  Josh Brolin was born on the 12th of February 1968 in Santa Monica, California. His mother, Jane Cameron Agee, worked as a casting director and wildlife activist. He grew up on a ranch in the Adelaida area of Paso Robles and attended elementary and middle school in Templeton. Around the age of 11 he moved to the Santa Barbara area and went on to attend Santa Barbara High School. He saw little of his father's acting career as a boy.

  In a 2014 interview, Brolin described a surfing friendship group that called itself the Cito Rats. He explained the mix of kids this way: "It was Santa Barbara. It was the '80s. It was punk rock. You either had the children of rich, neglectful parents or children of poor, so it was a mix. But we basically grew up the same way. I've never seen a group like that before or since."

  The cost of that world was heavy. Brolin admitted that he stole cars to pay for his drug use, which included heroin, a drug he said he never liked. He first spoke of 19 friends who had died. Later he gave a grimmer count, saying that 36 of the guys he grew up with were dead and that twelve were in jail. He added, "I keep careful count, all 36 dead guys."

  Brolin also tied himself to the local punk scene. In a 2012 New York Times interview, he claimed to have belonged to Montecito hardcore band Rich Kids on LSD. In a later radio interview he clarified that he was part of the garage band that first started playing, before it became known as RKL with other drummers and musicians. On the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, he named Jason Sears as his best friend and said, "Rich Kids on LSD was the band that I helped start."

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• 3. Goonies to Stocks

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  Brandon Walsh, a role in the Richard Donner film The Goonies in 1985, was the part that made Brolin recognizable. Before that, he had worked in television films and guest spots on TV shows. Soon afterward he came close to a series lead. He and Johnny Depp were the two finalists for the role of Tom Hanson in the series 21 Jump Street. The part went to Depp, but the two became close and stayed friends. Brolin guest-starred in an episode of the show's first season.

  The years after that were rougher. Brolin has implied that he turned away from film acting for years after the premiere of his second film, Thrashin', because he found his own acting "horrendous". The turning point came with Flirting With Disaster in 1996. He later said, "It's the first movie of mine where I wasn't watching my performance at all. I was just loving the movie."

  For several years he worked on stage in Rochester, New York, often alongside his mentor and friend Anthony Zerbe. On television, he played Wild Bill Hickok in the ABC Western The Young Riders, which ran three seasons from 1989 to 1992. Two later series did not last. Winnetka Road, a 1994 Aaron Spelling production, and Mister Sterling in 2003 were both cancelled after a few episodes.

  In his mid-20s, Brolin started trading stocks and considered quitting acting altogether. In 2014 he explained that he made a large amount of money over a three-year period. His summary of the method was blunt: "Fear and greed, that's all that there is. And I traded very specifically. I found momentum stocks that had room to breathe and I just grab a little of the breath." He also co-founded a stock-trading website called MarketProbability, which no longer exists.

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• 4. Oscar Season

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  American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott in 2007, was the next film Brolin booked after No Country for Old Men, and it too was a similar success. In 2008 he starred in W., an Oliver Stone biopic about key events in the life of George W. Bush. Stone pursued Brolin for the lead, and Brolin was hesitant at first.

  The same year brought the role that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk, Brolin played city supervisor Dan White, who assassinated San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. He wore a White Knot to the Academy Awards ceremony to show solidarity with the same-sex marriage movement. Besides the Oscar nomination, he received the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review awards for Best Supporting Actor. He was also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

  On set, Sean Penn, who played Milk, set out to calm any nerves about portraying gay men by, in Brolin's words, "grabbing the bull by the horns." At the first cast dinner, which included James Franco, Emile Hirsch and Diego Luna, Brolin recalled that Penn "walked right up and grabbed me and planted a huge one right on my lips."

  Also in 2008, Brolin hosted Saturday Night Live on the same night that Adele was the musical guest. He hosted again in April 2012 and returned a third time in March 2024.

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• 5. Studio Years

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  The People Speak, a 2009 documentary, drew on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Brolin both executive produced and performed in it. The film uses dramatic and musical performances of letters, diaries and speeches from everyday Americans. The next year he wrote and directed the short film X, his directorial debut. It follows an inmate who escapes prison to reunite with his daughter and searches for her murdered mother. X was the opening film at the first annual Union City International Film Festival in Union City, New Jersey, in December 2010.

  In the early 2010s, Brolin moved through a run of big-budget studio films. Jonah Hex in 2010 cast him as the title character, drawn from the DC Comics figure of the same name. He later said he hated making it and pointed to a schedule that demanded reshooting 66 pages in 12 days. He blamed the film's failure on studio interference in postproduction and on director Jimmy Hayward, whom he called "inexperienced" and a "bad choice (of director)."

  Also in 2010, he appeared in the Coen brothers' True Grit and in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. In 2012, Men in Black 3 had him play the younger version of Tommy Lee Jones's character Kevin Brown, also known as Agent K. It reunited the two actors after No Country for Old Men and In the Valley of Elah, both from 2007.

  In 2013 Brolin played John O'Mara, a fictional World War II veteran, in Gangster Squad. Later that year he played Joe Doucett in Oldboy, a remake of a 2003 South Korean film of the same name.

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• 6. Becoming Thanos

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  In 2014, Brolin was announced as the actor who would play Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He plays the character through motion capture and voice acting. He appeared as Thanos in cameos in Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 and Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015.

  Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019 were filmed back-to-back and gave Thanos a starring role. Critics praised the performance. Owen Gleiberman, writing for Variety, called Brolin's motion-capture work in Infinity War "supremely effective" and wrote that the evil in the movie "never feels less than personal." Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter praised Brolin's "calm, considered reading" of the character, which he said gave Thanos "an unexpectedly resonant emotional dimension."

  In 2021, Brolin also voiced an alternate version of Thanos in the What If...? series.

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• 7. Cable, Dune and Beyond

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  April 2017 brought a four-film contract with 20th Century Fox for Brolin to play the Marvel Comics character Nathan Summers, known as Cable, in the X-Men film series. Deadpool 2 in 2018 was the first installment. He was set to reprise the role in Fox's planned X-Force movie, but that plan stalled after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox.

  Director Denis Villeneuve became another recurring partner. They worked together on the action thriller Sicario in 2015. In February 2019, Brolin joined Villeneuve's Dune as Gurney Halleck. Dune premiered in October 2021 to generally positive reviews. Dune: Part Two followed in March 2024 to rave reviews.

  Brolin also moved into television. In April 2022 he starred as Royal Abbot in the Amazon Prime Video series Outer Range and served as an executive producer. The second season appeared on the 16th of May, with Brolin returning to the role and directing an episode.

  In 2025 he took a leading role in Zach Cregger's horror film Weapons, replacing Pedro Pascal. It was released in August to critical acclaim. Later that year came Edgar Wright's The Running Man, an adaptation of Stephen King's 1982 novel, in which Brolin plays the antagonist. He also appeared in Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Three more projects were slated for 2026. They were Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars, Brian Duffield's adaptation of Daniel Kraus' 2023 novel Whalefall, and the third and final Dune film, in which he will again play Gurney Halleck.

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• 8. Marriages and Reckoning

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  Brolin was married to actress Alice Adair from 1988 until 1994, and they have two children, including Eden. He was later engaged to actress Minnie Driver for six months. On the 15th of August 2004, he married actress Diane Lane.

  On the 20th of December 2004, Lane called the police after an altercation with him, and Brolin was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery. Lane declined to press charges, and the couple's spokesman described the incident as a misunderstanding. The couple divorced in 2013.

  On the 12th of July 2008, Brolin was arrested after an altercation at the Stray Cat Bar in Shreveport, Louisiana. Actor Jeffrey Wright and five other men, all crew members of W., were arrested with him. Brolin was released after posting a cash bond of $334. He told a reporter, "It was nice to be in jail knowing that I hadn't done anything wrong. And it was maddening to be in jail knowing that I hadn't done anything wrong." Shreveport prosecutors later dropped the charges against all seven men.

  New Year's Day 2013 brought another arrest, this time for public intoxication in Santa Monica, California. The rest of that year was very hard for him. Looking back, he said it made him think about his mother dying when he was in his 20s and the impact he had never moved past, adding, "I was always such a mama's boy." He also said, "I realized that I was on a destructive path. I knew that I had to change and mature." Brolin has been sober from alcohol since 2013.

  In March 2013, he began dating his former assistant, the model Kathryn Boyd. They became engaged in March 2015 and married on the 24th of September 2016. On the 29th of May 2018, they announced they were expecting their first child. On the 4th of November 2018, Brolin announced on Instagram that Boyd had given birth to a daughter. Their second daughter was born on the 25th of December 2020.

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