Josh Brolin's 12-Hour Acid Trip, Missing Son and An Expletive-Filled Awards Speech: It's All inFrom Under the Truck

Mar. 15, 2025

Josh Brolindocuments his life on and off screen in his new memoirFrom Under the Truck.

Now, the actor, 56, is a doting father of four and 11 years sober. But he’s traveled quite a road to get here. His new book, out Nov. 19, details his “unconventional childhood” and his rise to fame in hit movies likeThe GooniesandNo Country for Old Men.

Brolin also earnestly reflects on his close relationship with his late,fearless mother Jane Agee Brolinand how her death affected him, as well as his experiences with addiction and fatherhood.

From tragically losing his best friend at a young age to the advice he received from famed directorSteven Spielberg, here are the biggest bombshells from the book.

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Josh Brolin at ‘Dune: Part Two’ photocall on February 14, 2024.Jeff Spicer/Getty

Jeff Spicer/Getty

Before Brolin was a movie star, he was a kid living in the countryside of California. During a chapter of his book that takes place in 1979, he wrote that, when he was 11 years old, he had a best friend named Danny who was three years older than him. Despite being close to one another, Brolin often felt that Danny carried a resentment toward him all the way to his tragic death.

“I mean, he loved me as much as we all loved each other, being that your nearest neighbor was at least a mile away, but there was always something extra that stabbed at him about me,” he wrote.

One tragic night, on his father’s birthday, Danny “went into a rage” after finding out that his mother was not his birth mother. According to Brolin, the boy was drinking at the time and had retired to his room to perhaps “sleep it off.”

“But when he woke up it was all still there: a reality in hell,” the actor continued. “He grabbed a .22 caliber rifle. We all had them. It was our bucolic flag of pride. He loaded it. He walked out of his bedroom door and turned the corner into the living room.”

Danny asked those in the room, “You think I’ll do it?” before pulling the trigger and shooting himself. “He was 14 years old, a time when you just let kids be kids. We took turns pulling each other in the red wagon around the yard. We climbed trees. We walked miles to each other’s farms. We didn’t shoot ourselves, but he did,” Brolin lamented.

He felt “strange” about being part ofThe Goonies

(L-R) Martha Plimpton, Josh Brolin, and Ke Huy Quan in ‘The Goonies’.Warner Brothers/Everett Collection

Warner Brothers/Everett Collection

“I can’t help but feel I’ve done something good for the first time in my life,” Brolin wrote of the airport moment, “but also it might be a mistake that I’m here.” The actor continued to recall feeling misplaced alongside his colleagues as many of them had already starred in other projects.

“It’s all very strange that I’m here with them, a part of it,” he added. “I’ve never been part of anything other than with people who nobody else wanted to be a part of.”

Steven Spielberg gave Brolin some advice

In the cult classic flick, Brolin played older brother Brandon “Brand” Walsh to Astin’s Michael “Mikey” Walsh. The two filmed their first scene together in October 1984, which was also Brolin’s first ever filming experience. “The scene was touching and emotional, but on about the fifth take we got into a fit of laughter that I couldn’t control,” Brolin wrote.

Now, in retrospect, Brolin suspects that his behavior was because of his nerves. But at the time, he recalled looking at Spielberg – who co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Columbus –  and feeling like he had his approval. “Steven Spielberg was on set watching, and I think he liked it,” he wrote. “He smiled a little bit once. He told me to keep loose. I’ll remember that.”

Brolin’s mother almost hooked up with a producer onThe Goonies

Josh Brolin; Jane Cameron Agee.Warner Brothers/Everett Collection; Ron Galella Collection/Getty

Warner Brothers/Everett Collection; Ron Galella Collection/Getty

In March 1985, Brolin invited his mother Jane to be with him as he finished filmingThe Goonies. The actor recalled feeling pressured to do so, writing, “She’s my mother and I’d be a bad son not to include her.” He told her to keep a low profile, to which she said, “What am I supposed to just do, nothing?”

A few days later, Brolin received a call from his mother saying that she had “gone out” with people from the crew and one of the movie producers propositioned her. The alleged encounter happened at her hotel room, when the producer visited her, “dropped his pants and wanted to get to it.”

His mother denied the producer’s advances and told him, “If you think I’d f— someone who wears blue boxer shorts, you gotta be outta your mind.”

After that, Brolin claimed the producer called the young actor into his office and told him that his mother is “sick, and that she may need help.” He stood up for his mother and told the producer, “Because she wouldn’t f— you?” After that, he was asked to leave his office.

He thought his son Trevor wasn’t going to survive birth

Josh Brolin and his son Trevor.Josh Brolin/Instagram

Josh Brolin/Instagram

Brolin welcomed his son Trevor with his first wife, Alice Adair, in 1988. He recalled the traumatic birth in his memoir, in which he wrote that his son was “a dark blue” when he was born.

Brolin described the infant as “tiny, defenseless and limp.” The actor remembered the doctor patting the newborn on his back to help him take his first breath, before moments passed and the doctor “looked up at a nurse, and the nurse sped out the door.”

“Something is severely wrong,” he wrote. “Everybody has changed. There is panic. It’s no longer a question.”

Brolin and Adair’s firstborn survived and they later found out that it was “just some mucus stuck in his throat that he didn’t want to let go of yet.”

Brolin once went on a 12-hour acid trip that turned bad

Josh Brolin at the ‘Dune: Part Two’ premiere on February 25, 2024.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

In 1981, Brolin took acid for the first time with his friends, which resulted in a 12-hour trip. “It was as hopeful a day as I could’ve had,” the actor wrote. “I had not only weathered the cave that turned me from a boy into a man, but I had also thrived. I arrived at what I thought was a beginning of a happier life.”

When he “came down after 12 hours, just as the sun began to set, I knew that life was good and was to be lived and experienced and tasted with a fully protruding, exposed tongue.”

All was not always rosy on Brolin’s drug experiences, though. Later, he had a nightmarish experience, during which he saw “epileptic faces, desperate children, rabid animals coming at me.”

Brolin’s son Trevor went missing while he was filmingNo Country for Old Men

Josh Brolin in 2007’s ‘No Country For Old Men’.Paramount/Shutterstock

Paramount/Shutterstock

While Brolin was filmingNo Country for Old Menin the summer of 2006, he received a phone call informing him that his son Trevor, who would’ve been around 18 at the time, was missing. He was told that Trevor went out with his friends the night prior and never returned, and that two unidentified burn victims had been brought to a local hospital.

Brolin recalled feeling like he had “no control” over his body once he hung up the phone. “I started to slip into visions of what it was to have a son who’d pass. This can’t be,” he wrote.

From there, the actor called hospitals in Los Angeles to see if his son had shown up, but he had no luck. “They all had someone dead,” he remembered.

Brolin ended up locating his son at the final hospital he called, where Trevor was “fine” and recovering from alcohol poisoning.

Brolin delivered an expletive-filled speech after praise for Milk

Josh Brolin in 2008’s ‘Milk’.Focus/Kobal/Shutterstock

Focus/Kobal/Shutterstock

In 2008, Brolin starred inthe biographical dramaMilk– based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk – alongsideSean Penn. The role earned him an award from the New York Film Critics Circle for best supporting actor.

Brolin recalled walking the red carpet “where a few photos were taken: my arm heavy around Sean’s shoulders; another one of me yelling something at the photographers and several of me looking behind me at something that probably wasn’t there.”

“The wine started to speak about other actors, about certain writers. Words like motherf—er and piece of s— rolled off my tongue and onto a growing din of shock and disgust,” he wrote. “There I was on my perceived and so temporary pulpit with all eyes on me, pontificating on how I viewed awards and how I ‘didn’t give a f— about the people who doubted me or tried to erase me.’ "

In the aftermath, Brolin recalled, “A few people clapped softly. My publicist didn’t and looked instead at the ground. Sean smiled a friendly smile, as your brother would while you’re being wheeled back into a traumatic surgery.”

source: people.com