The movie that made Josh Brolin quit Hollywood: “I was crushed”
It’s not easy being a child actor in Hollywood. There are the success stories of people like Ron Howard, Ryan Gosling, and Kurt Russell, but they’re pretty rare. Even those who are able to escape the predators and abusers in the industry face hurdles like peaking too soon, being irrevocably typecast as a child, and growing up to be slightly less symmetrical than your seven-year-old self.
By these standards, Josh Brolin did pretty well for himself, but only in the sense that he was able to move past a decidedly rough beginning and reinvent himself in the eyes of Hollywood. He started acting in the 1980s when he was in his teens, landing his breakthrough role in the 1985 family classic The Goonies. He played Brand, Mikey’s brother and the oldest member of the group. The movie was a hit, and it seemed like an auspicious beginning for Brolin’s nascent career.
All of that promise came crashing to a halt when he appeared in his second film, Thrashin’, which featured the excellent tagline ‘Hot. Reckless. Totally insane.’ It’s sort of a West Side Story for skateboarders, following a kid from one skater gang who falls for a member of the rival gang. There is no denying that it had a very cool pedigree. Tony Hawk made an appearance, as did the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sherilyn Fenn, who played a character named Velvet, tried to get her then-boyfriend Johnny Depp into the cast, but he was repeatedly rejected.
It was not destined for instant success, but it has become a very niche cult classic for the board sports crowd. For Brolin, it was nothing short of devastating. “When I went to the premiere, I was crushed,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “I thought my acting was horrendous. It was the worst acting I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He was so horrified that he decided to quit just as he was beginning. “I moved to New York after that,” he said. “And I devoted myself to the theatre.”
Brolin made himself scarce for a full decade, only venturing onto the silver screen a couple of times in minor roles until the late ‘90s. Before the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning neo-western No Country for Old Men in 2007, he seemed like a teenage flash-in-the-pan flailing for the chance to be a character actor. Needless to say, he changed that perception pretty quickly, not only nabbing an Oscar nomination for No Country but seizing the opportunity to reinvent himself with a string of high-profile, critically acclaimed movies like Milk, True Grit, and Sicario.
These days, most people know Brolin exclusively for his work with the Coen Brothers rather than the movies he made before. Even fans of The Goonies are often surprised to realise that Mikey’s older brother and Llewelyn Moss are one and the same. The fact that the actor left it all behind two decades before scoring his role in No Country is probably for the best, unless you’re a skater, in which case, Thrashin’ might be your new favourite film.
