The Professional - Cigar Aficionado Article on Josh Brolin

[JohnS]

The following Article first appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Cigar Aficionado...

The Professional

Josh Brolin was born into a show business family, but his road to screen stardom has taken him down many paths

By Jack Bettridge - From Smoking With Josh Brolin, July/August 2024

Josh Brolin is on the move. He’s sold his house in Malibu and is preparing to relocate up the California coast to Santa Barbara, where he spent his teenage years. The reason that’s odd is that the 56-year-old actor’s home near Point Dume was recently profiled in The New York Times Style Magazine. The article details how Brolin and his wife, Kathryn Boyd Brolin, spent six years remodeling, adding a guest house, placing a vintage Airstream trailer in the driveway and outfitting the place with eclectic furniture and artwork. “The most insane, mind-numbing permit process I could ever imagine” is how he now describes it.

“And there’s no place like it,” Brolin says. “And we were settled, we’re done.”

And yet he’s moving.

“I’ve had a really, really good personal run, you know, I feel good about my parenting, I feel good about my marriage, I feel good,” he reflects. “So, I knew something was coming.”

Part of an extensive, but briefly enjoyed, renovation of Josh Brolin’s Malibu house was the singing cowboy’s trailer in Hail, Caesar!

That something came when he returned from a publicity junket for Dune: Part Two, the sci-fi epic that’s the top-grossing movie of the year, with more than $700 million in ticket sales so far. “I came home and my wife said, ‘You know, that place that we saw in Santa Barbara that we said no to? I think that we should say yes.’ ” That was it. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

For anyone else the abrupt change in course might seem odd, but for Brolin it’s somehow appropriate. His career trajectory alone has proceeded in fits and starts. Today, he’s known as an actor attached to some of moviedom’s most successful franchises: The Avengers (he played the supervillain Thanos in some of the films in the series, including Avengers: Endgame, the second-highest grossing film of all time); Deadpool (as Cable, a cybernetic time traveler in Deadpool 2); and Men in Black (doing a dead-on impression of a young Tommy Lee Jones in the third installment), as well as both parts of the Dune series. But his filmography shows a breadth that goes far beyond. He’s played to critical recognition in such films as No Country for Old Men, a Best Picture winner, and Milk, in which he was the assassin Dan White, a role that got him nominated for an Academy Award. He has done comedy as well as impersonated cowboys, a firefighter and a CIA officer. Today, he stars in “Outer Range” on Amazon Prime Video.

Brolin’s interests are just as eclectic. He’s an enthusiastic and serious motorcyclist, writes poetry and collects art. He talks of a shady past, even detailing his world travels and lyric writing for a song with the accomplished film score composer Hans Zimmer. And he’s an involved investor.

For Josh Brolin (second from left), celebrity is all in the family. He’s the son of television and movie star James Brolin (far right), from “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and The Amityville Horror, and the stepson of superstar Barbra Streisand (second from right). His wife Kathryn (far left) is an actress and photographer.

Sitting poolside at his soon-to-be former home—he’s decided against hosting in the Airstream to keep it clean for the new owners—Brolin is ready for a cigar. “Let’s have a smoke,” he says. “I would love that.” He mentions Bolivars and the Hoyo de Monterrey Petit Robusto as among his favorites, but settles on a Cohiba Siglo VI. He offers his guest a drink: Liquid Death. It represents one of his business ventures. Not as ominous as it sounds (he’s been sober since 2013), the beverage is canned water, founded by a neighbor whom Brolin invited to go on a ride with his motorcycle buddies. The actor was unimpressed with the new member’s cycling skills, but was interested in his business idea. Brolin bought in and the company is now valued at $1.4 billion.

Investing may seem like a departure for Brolin, a man whose family is so connected to the entertainment industry. He was born in 1968 to James Brolin, an actor who would begin a long run the next year as Dr. Steven Kiley in TV’s “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” and Jane Cameron Agee, a casting director. After his parents divorced, his father would go on to wed television actress Jan Smithers and is now married to the megastar chanteuse and actress Barbra Streisand. His daughter Eden from an earlier marriage portrays Mia on Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone.”

Liquid Death is not Brolin’s first foray into the business world. In fact, he temporarily abandoned acting two decades ago to pursue trading full time. “It happened because I wasn’t getting hired. [Then] I did an episode of a Western series, or something West, I’ll look it up,” he says, struggling to recall 2005’s “Into the West.” The actors involved were flown to New York and Los Angeles to promote the series, “which was very rare for me, because I held no value in anybody’s eyes.” On the return, costar Skeet Ulrich introduced him to Brett Markinson, the entrepreneur who recently started Homium, a financial services company specializing in home equity. “He and I just clicked, and I made him laugh. He was a big, very gregarious guy, a lot of laughter on that plane. And I said, ‘what do you do?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you know, trading?’ I’d always been interested in trading. I’ve always been good with numbers. I’ve always been good with graphs. And you know, mathematics was a thing when I was a kid, and I was the kid that would actually go to the teacher and ask for extra work.”

The two became fast friends. “And I got more and more into the idea. I just had no shame about asking the same questions over and over and over,” Brolin says. “I said, ‘Well, what do I need to trade?’ ” Markinson directed him to the 
necessary software and hardware: TradeStation and three computer screens. “I would go over and watch him do it. And I fell a few times and I would play like Google which was stupid or I would play companies that were so volatile, they’d be something going straight down because of news that came out. I didn’t know the difference between real-time news and news of things that had already happened.” Eventually, he developed a discipline based on Markinson’s advice. “He said, ‘When you look at the activity of a graph, it’s fear and greed, that’s all you’re seeing, especially with all the personal traders. And if you don’t play into this fear and greed factor, you will find companies that have a solid foundation.’ ”

Brolin in his Oscar-nominated role as Dan White in Milk.

What soon became a more solid foundation for Brolin was his acting career. After delivering a string of minor supporting roles, in 2007 he starred alongside Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. The film was directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Lauded by critics, it went on to get eight Oscar nominations, and won four, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, for Bardem. Brolin became friends with the Coens, and worked with them on other roles, including the villain Tom Chaney in their remake of True Grit.

In 2008, he starred in W., in which he displayed his knack for mimicry, playing President George W. Bush. Portraying Dan White, the killer of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Milk. In 2010, he took on the role of a financial master of the universe in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Brolin may be best known today as the greatest supervillain in the annals of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As Thanos in the Avengers series of films, he is an eight-foot, 700-pound alien warlord who plots to kill half the universe in a demented attempt to avert overpopulation. Via the heavy use of special effects, the Mad Titan that made it on to the screen resembles almost nothing like Brolin (who’s more like 5’ 10’’ and sturdily compact), but through his voice and motion-capture of his expressions the actor manages to inhabit the character. “It was a lot of work,” he says, “but it was fun. Yeah, it was fun. I don’t mind the discomfort of it.” Even wearing onesies covered in dots to make the special effects work didn’t bother him. “It’s the embarrassment factor that I look forward to, you know.”

Brolin says he embraces discomfort and hates nothing more than being pigeonholed. He recently hosted “Saturday Night Live,” just to test himself. “There was no reason to do it. It doesn’t do anything for my career,” he says. “This time, I go on SNL because I want to know if I’m getting lazy or not. I want to know if I’m getting a little too comfortable. You know, a little too much success. Yeah, a little too much money. And I have an abject fear of that—of getting too comfortable. I have no interest in it.”

He describes the grueling pace of putting on the sketch comedy show: five or six days of writing, rewriting, wardrobe fittings, a 20-hour day on Friday. “And then I slept two hours, and I woke up in a total panic,” he says. He began rewriting his monologue. “I started thinking about different sketches, some that I knew better than others and others that I needed to work on.” He caught five hours of sleep and woke up to tears of joy. “It was great. I love doing it. I got everything I needed to get out of it. Do I think it was brilliant? No? Do I think it was good? Yes.”

Brolin as the villain in the 2010 remake of True Grit.

Yet challenging himself as an entertainer wasn’t Brolin’s first intention, even though it might have been an obvious choice. Despite his pedigree, he rejected such a career early on.

Brolin had been physically removed from the entertainment industry, having spent much of his youth on a ranch in Paso Robles and then in Santa Barbara. His first aspiration was to be a stuntman, then a cook and later a lawyer. While many showbiz kids are discouraged from entering the industry by their parents, Brolin made the decision on his own having witnessed his father’s career instability. “It made no sense,” he says. “There was a moment where he did super well, when he did Amityville Horror. And then about that time, he did a movie that nobody saw called Night of the Juggler.”

Despite their shared careers, Brolin says that he and his father seldom talk shop. By way of example, he plays a video that his father sent him by cellphone—a preferred means of communication when they are separated. It discusses a drive that James Brolin is making through the mountains of New Mexico, including some nostalgia about an earlier trip they had made.

“Pretty normal shit, right?” he asks. “What I love most is that we’ll talk about work a little bit and it’ll get pretty boring pretty quick. And then it’ll be the stuff that resonates.”

He mentions an effect of their entertainment lineage that he finds funny: “When somebody will say, ‘Hey, you’re Eden’s dad, right? I saw your girl or I worked with Eden on “Yellowstone” or whatever.’ And then, and I remember when that happened with me. My dad called me and he said, ‘Somebody just asked me if I was Josh Brolin’s dad.’ I was like, ‘How’s does that feel?’ He was like, ‘I’m not sure yet.’ But yeah, you know, when you grow up, and you’re James Brolin’s son, that’s a thing.”

His foray into acting came after a misspent chapter in his Santa Barbara youth. The movies may give an impression of California surfers as squeaky-clean Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello types or the goofy stoner Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But Brolin talks about a more sinister side, a “perfect storm” of neglectful parents and kids left to their own devices that he called “paradise in disguise.” Brolin ran with a notorious gang of surfers. “Oh, I went to jail. I did all this stuff,” he says. “It was not normal.” In fact, he says it made him feel a tinge of anxiety about his upcoming move, although the area today bears little resemblance to what he knew.

Brolin in motion-capture effects as the Avenger-slaying Thanos.

“I got kicked out of my house in Santa Barbara. And I came down here to live with my dad on his couch in his apartment. I made up a résumé totally, 100 percent fake. Went from agent to agent to agent. And all of them said no, except for one agent by the name of Hillary Shore. And I had to borrow money to get out of the parking lot because it was in Beverly Hills . . . . The first job I got after probably 300 interviews, maybe more like 350 readings. I got The Goonies.”

The 1985 movie is a big-hearted comedy about a gang of kids who search for lost treasure in Oregon. Brolin looks back on the experience with affection. “It was great. It was just a super, super, super special, special time. And I thought that’s how every movie was made. That was not the case.”

He muses on the fluctuations of the movie business: “Are you relevant? Are you not relevant? What do you mean to us? And even if you do have a success, how long does it last? Do you have a moment where you did one movie that everybody saw, and then you never backed it up with anything? I had The Goonies for 22 years. And I had other movies but none anybody knew. And then I did No Country, and people thought when I got hired, the word that was most used was ‘why?’ ”

He says there is a misconception of the rigors of the job: “They think what you do is you walk down a red carpet and wave at people, that’s your whole profession.” That’s the reason he wrote Dune: Exposures, about the making of that movie. “It’s a little peek into the true behind the scenes, the absurdity of it.” Brolin is an inveterate writer. His memoir From Under the Truck goes on sale in November and deals with very personal subjects like the death of his mother in a car accident in 1995. “I’ve let only two people read my book, Ethan Coen’s one of them. And he basically raked me over the coals—in a good way, and a tough way, but in a good way. And then finally, I basically said, ‘F*** off,’ and he said, ‘Now you’re a writer.’ I thought that was funny.”

Cigars are another Brolin passion. He has an unabashed predilection for Cubans and remains hungry for ever more cigar knowledge. Handed a Ziploc bag of cigars, he searches out the Boveda pack within to check on the humidity level. “It’s kind of like classical music,” he muses. “You go in there and you go, ‘Okay, I want to just go a little bit deeper.’ Like what makes this that much better? And it’s a never-ending thing.”

Brolin relates a familiar first-cigar story—but with a twist. In 1989, the young actor scored a steady gig playing Wild Bill Hickok on “The Young Riders” for television. “I was going to get paid every episode, which I had never experienced.”  Brolin decided to buy his parents “real presents” for Christmas. A costar, Stephen Baldwin, had just been to Cuba and urged him to give his father cigars and a humidor. At Baldwin’s direction, Brolin bought an inlaid humidor and what he was told were five amazing cigars. “And I gave it to my dad for Christmas,” he recalls. “And he’s like, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’ And I was like, ‘Your son made it.’ And he said, ‘I can’t wait to smoke them.’ ”

Six months later, when Brolin had heard nothing about the cigars, he asked his father if he had sampled them. The elder Brolin said that he had ordered a special brandy to pair them with and was waiting for it to arrive. Another six months went by and he told his son he hadn’t smoked the cigars yet as the spirits company had gone out of business. After another six months, his father came clean, admitting that he couldn’t smoke them. As kids he and his brother had been caught smoking cigarettes by his father, who made the boys smoke and inhale lousy cigars as punishment. Inevitably the boys got sick. Brolin’s father confessed that ever since he detested the smell of a cigar, but he couldn’t admit it because it was such a kind gift. A private pilot, the elder Brolin, had stowed the gift in an airplane hangar for a year and a half. By the time the younger Brolin retrieved it, the cigars had turned to dust. He still has the inlaid humidor.

“And now you have, in Cigar Aficionado, the son of that guy who was tortured by his father,” he says with a smile. “And he loves nothing more than the smell of a good cigar.” 

Source: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/the-professional