Are you able to consider it’s been 40 years since The Goonies? The film was Josh Brolin’s first movie, and 4 a long time later he’s a longtime and sought-after actor with a number of films on the 2025 schedule. Nevertheless, when the Oscar nominee mirrored on being a part of The Goonies solid, he spoke about his nepo child standing and the way it labored in opposition to him.
In recent times, a ton of actors with well-known mother and father have been commenting on what it’s wish to be the kid of an enormous star within the enterprise. (For instance, Johnny Depp’s daughter, Lily-Rose Depp has felt like “folks have been prepared” to see her fail since she was a child). For Josh Brolin, who’s the son of James Brolin, when he was attempting to interrupt into the business, being a nepo child solely meant he wanted to show himself extra. As he recalled:
I believe Goonies was fairly an accident. I went in there, I might been instructed, they pulled the Brolin factor, ‘Are you [James] Brolin’s child? You need to be an actor, huh?’ So as an alternative of that nepotistic factor, they checked out me and had been like, ‘Oh yeah? So act.’ ‘I’m not gonna allow you to, as a result of I do know that you simply assume you’re gonna make it…’ Which is simply ridiculous. I studied, and I bought Stanislavski books, Grotowski, the Poor Theatre, and Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty. I stayed in a bookstore 90% of the time. Simply studying, studying, studying.
When Brolin recalled incomes his first Hollywood position whereas on the Actually! With Rob Lowe podcast, he shared that it wasn’t straightforward for him to get roles as a result of he had a well-known father. It sounds prefer it truly led folks to consider he thought he had it straightforward, they usually wanted extra convincing. As he continued:
After which I met Dick Donner and Steven Spielberg, and I simply regarded proper for the half. You have a look at Sean Astin, you have a look at the kind of film it’s, I regarded like a little bit of a foul boy, however form of a jock, and I used to be in fine condition or no matter. In order that they had been like, that is the man. I went again six occasions, simply so they might be certain that, after which I did it.
Are you able to think about your first job being with the likes of Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner? It’s truly so wild. However for individuals who assume Josh Brolin bought the half as a result of he was the son of one other actor, it seems like he actually needed to show himself, and it was the case of being there on the proper place, proper time.
Apparently sufficient, Brolin isn’t the one nepo child in The Goonies. Sean Astin is the son of Oscar winner Patty Duke. Nevertheless, the solid additionally included first-time actors with blue-collar backgrounds like Corey Feldman, whose mother was a cocktail waitress and Ke Huy Quan, whose household truly fled to America from the Vietnam Struggle and had been a part of the Refugee Admissions Program in 1979.
Brolin has additionally beforehand talked about how he thought he’d rise to fame proper after The Goonies, however had skilled struggles straight after and fell off. He wouldn’t star in one other theatrical film till 1997’s Mimic, and he didn’t actually develop into an enormous title till he was solid within the Coen brothers’ No Nation For Outdated Males. After that turned an enormous success, critically and commercially, issues actually took off for him – nevertheless it seems like his profession undoubtedly didn’t come straightforward.