Actor Josh Brolin is opening up about his sobriety after quitting alcohol more than a decade ago.
The “Dune: Part Two” actor discussed maintaining his sobriety and life events that led him to get sober in a recent interview with the Times published Saturday.
“I was born to drink. I was born to drink. My mother drank just like me, and I was raised to be a man and drink like the male equivalent of my mother,” Brolin writes in an excerpt from his new memoir. “From Under the Truck” obtained by The Times.
Brolin told the Times he decided to stay sober after visiting his grandmother on her deathbed in 2013 while drunk.
“I knew that would be the last time I drank,” said Brolin, who went to rehab, according to the Times interview.
Josh Brolin attends the world premiere of “Dune: Part Two” at Leicester Square on February 15, 2024 in London.
Jeff Spicer/Getty Images, FILE
Brolin, who is 56, said getting older has made being sober all the easier.
“I love getting older. It’s a good excuse to finally say, ‘Okay, just calm down, you don’t have to spin all the time,'” he said.
When reflecting on his sobriety, Brolin shared that he enjoyed not drinking.
“I like being sober. I have more fun,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing I experience that I’m absolutely certain wouldn’t be worse if I drank.”
Brolin told the Times that he had achieved professional success earlier in his career by scoring leading roles in films such as “W.” and ‘No Country for Old Men’ had ‘confused’ him.
“I wasn’t in the best state of mind at the time. There was suddenly a lot of attention. I had been doing it for a long time without any attention. Suddenly it was calls from great people, people I respected… to talk,” he said.
Brolin also recalled how Barbra Streisand, to whom his father James Brolin is married, responded to his request for a glass of wine by asking, “But aren’t you a drunk?”
Brolin said he appreciated the blunt response, adding, “At the end of the day, there’s nothing I appreciate more in someone than the ability to just say it, regardless of the response.”
Brolin shares two children with his wife Kathryn Boyd, whom he married in 2016. Brolin also shares two children with his first wife, Alice Adair.
