“His mouth was like a suckerfish around my big toe!” Josh isn’t goofing on his notorious armpit-licking encounter with Patricia Arquette last year, in Flirting With Disaster, but on a recent L.A. news report about a foot fetishist posing as an aspiring massage therapist. “The armpit thing’s not far removed from reality,” he says, laughing. “You start to see how much it parallels it.”
As a rule, Brolin, 28, tries not to dwell on parallels- specifically, those frequently drawn between his own career, now gaining momentum with his new film, the indie psychothriller Nightwatch, and that of his father, television mainstay James Brolin. It’s not that Josh frets about how their resumes will compare. It’s been more than a decade since he got into the family business, and he has run the gamut from the kid’s adventure flick The Goonies to a role as the young Wild Bill Hickok on the early 90s TV series Young Riders. It’s just that the younger Brolin would rather discuss his children, 8-year-old son Trevor and 3-year-old daughter Eden, than talk about whose kid he happens to be. Certainly there’s plenty of ground to cover. The mother of his children, actress Deborah Adair, is both his ex-wife and current live in love. The couple’s divorce, it seems, didn’t work out. “The kids come first,” Brolin says. “I was always away from my girlfriend at the time, seeing the kids, and I’d show up going, ‘Morning! Can I make you some coffee?’ And Debbie’s boyfriend would be like, ‘Why is he here?” With Brolin’s rugged charm and his upcoming screen turn, the answer should be come clear.
Reporter: Tom Russo