Josh Brolin Says Nepotism Made It More Challenging to Prove Himself as a Young Actor During ‘The Goonies’ Audition
A teenage Josh Brolin quickly got humbled by Steven Spielberg while filming 1985’s The Goonies.
The actor, who’s now 56, recently looked back at his early acting days on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe, including his starring role as Brand Walsh in the beloved film, directed by Richard Donner.
“I think Goonies was quite an accident,” Brolin recalled. “I went in there, I’ve been told, they pulled the Brolin thing, ‘Are you [James] Brolin’s kid? You want to be an actor, huh?’ So instead of that nepotistic thing, they looked at me and were like, ‘Oh yeah? So act.’”
The Avengers star set out to prove himself as a serious actor, putting his head down in the books and hoping to learn as much as possible.
“I studied,” he said. “I got Stanislavski books, Grotowski … and Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty. I stayed in a bookstore 90 percent of the time. Just reading, reading, reading.”
He eventually got to meet with Donner and Spielberg, who produced the film, and they ultimately decided on his casting. “I just looked right for the part,” the Dune actor said. “You look at Sean Astin, you look at the type of movie it is, I looked like a bit of a bad boy, but sort of a jock, and I was in good shape, so they were like, that’s the guy. I went back six times, just so they could make sure, and then I did it.”
All of Brolin’s newfound knowledge also led to some big ideas. However, once Brolin found the courage to share them with Spielberg, the filmmaker quickly brought him back down to reality.
“I came to Steven at some point, we were in one of the tunnels, and I said, ‘Hey, Steven, can I talk to you for a second?’” he recalled of their interaction while filming. “I said, ‘Hey, don’t you think that the tunnels kind of represent my mother’s womb? And what if we film me climbing up the tunnel, but really I’m trying to cut that emotional umbilical cord of my mother, and I could have tears coming down my face?’ I went into this whole thing, and I was getting all excited because he was nodding his head, and then I waited.”
“And then he looked at me and he said, ‘Why don’t you just act? Just say the words on the page, you’ll be fine,’” he added. “And I could have been like, ‘Dick!’ But I didn’t, I was like, ‘Oh, totally. I got it.’”
The Goonies also starred Astin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Ke Huy Quan and Martha Plimpton. The film follows a group of young misfits called The Goonies who discover an ancient map and set out on an adventure to find a legendary pirate’s long-lost treasure.
