Presumably he doesn't mind that Hollywood won't be rebuffed. After acting in such indie films as Flirting with Disaster (as the straight-arrow, bisexual Fed) and gamely tackling such roles as a cockroach-battling hero in Mimic and a seductive villain in last year's Mod Squad, Brolin, 32, is pressing into mainstream with this summer's sci-fi flick Hollow Man, as the buddy of Invisibility-prone scientist Kevin Bacon. Josh's dad James, of course, is an entrenched TV star -- Marcus Welby, M.D.; Hotel and the current Pensacola -- while his stepmom of two years is la Streisand herself (Brolin fils calls her Barbra). And Josh's own love? Bright-faced actress Minnie Driver, whom he met at a barbecue in 998 (the pair also heat up the upcoming Mexican-desert drama Slow Burn). But Brolin's surroundings put all those tabloid teasers into perspective, according to actor Anthony Zerbe, a friend since the two gunslinged through the early nineties series The Young Riders. "There's this whole Hollywood aspect to Josh's life, but then he's got his ranch where he takes off his shirt and digs a well," says Zerbe. "The place is a bulwark against the intrusive parts of his profession."

Brolin's father and his late mother, Jane, a "female Grizzly Adams" who nursed ailing animals for the California Department of Fish and game, bought the land in 1975 and built their dream home. Josh grew up here with his brother, Jess, and was an A student at Santa Barbara High, some 90 miles away. "My dad dug the pond," says Brolin, skipping stones on the half-acre body of water. "I was lucky to be around people who appreciate this life." His mom, a "spitfire" who urged him to speak his mind, stayed after the couple split in 1985. Five years ago, she died in a car crash, and Josh, then stage acting and directing in Rochester, N.Y., inherited his childhood home -- and all its memories. In the small office, a shelf of his mom's cookbooks; in the pine-beamed, Santa Fe-influenced living room, cowhide couches and a backgammon table (I broke the glass top when I was Eden's age"); and on a counter in the kitchen, a tin holding his mother's ashes. An unorthodox resting place, maybe, but, Brolin says with a smile, "That's how she wanted it."

Initially, nostalgia inhibited him from making the house his own. "For three years, I didn't move a lamp or change a bulb," he says. Lately, however, he's begun to tinker. Streisand hasn't offered any decorating tips, though Brolin notes that she's "very into her home like I am." She visited once, right after he moved in. "It was falling apart," says Brolin. "She said I should sell it." Instead, he tidied things up, bleached the sun-charred decks, and began combing antique stores for Tiffany lamps and Latin-influenced, carved-wood furniture. Outside, he plans to build a dock over the catfish pond. "When I was growing up, if you slipped walking in, you'd get three fish bones in your foot. It'll be easier for the kids to swim."

But what the one-time pasta chef really wants to master is nonchalant hosting, a la the Europeans. "They have their table outside and take their time," says Brolin, whose specialty is zabaglione. "That's what I want to create." He should have no problem, says Mary Steenburgen, who appeared with the younger Brolin in the recent TV version of Picnic. "Josh has a real sense of beauty." she says, "and he's very nurturing." He's also resolute. While filming Hollow Man, he decided to learn how to play guitar. "He borrowed mine when he could hardly play," says Kevin Bacon. "By the end of the shoot, he played well. If he has an interest, Josh does it." Adds Zerbe: "he's focused, which is why he's good on a Harley and at poetry."

That focus has been trained on girlfriend Driver since the duo's first date (they watched a sunset from his red Dodge Ram pickup). With Brolin's blessing, she has draped antique quilts over worn chairs in the living room, and photos beaming her smile pop up all over the house. And those children's drawings on the fridge? "Those are Minnie's," Brolin says, laughing. Each cartoon has a caption: "Carmine has hysterics when Esmeralda has a tantrum," "Carmine and Esmeralda fight over the remote," and so on. Explains Brolin, "I'm Carmine, the curmudgeon. She's Esmeralda, the beautiful, dancing, Spanish-looking chick who's with the guy with the serious emotional hump on his back." He comes upon "Esmeralda watches Carmine sleep" and grins: "That's nice."

Brolin and Driver seem to have doodled their way into a complementary relationship. "I'm more cynical, she lightens me up," he says. "I can't imagine being with anybody else." He's mum on marriage but admits he's gaga. "Absolutely. One hundred percent." It helps that Driver is smitten with the kids, who spend weekends at the ranch and weekdays with their mom, Alice Adair, an ex-actress with whom Brolin parted in 1995. The London-bred Driver "loves being up here," Brolin says, though the ways of the wild can throw her. When Brolin recently ordered his dog to get rid of a squirrel ("They ruin my property"), Driver turned ashen. "Man, tears -- just wahhh," he says with a wince. "she'd never seen anything so violent ... but that's country life."

These days the former punk rocker with a daredevil streak -- Brolin won the Toyota/Pro Celebrity car race this year (as did his dad in 1978) and he used to skydive -- is sticking to the ground. "Now I think, 'What if the chute doesn't open?' " His current notion of adventure includes checking out the Animal Planet channel with his kids. "This is the first time we've had TV in six years," says Brolin. "We're urbanizing!" He also kicks back by watching Spencer Tracy flicks or spinning Pavarotti on the Wurlitzer jukebox. Or, he'll mend a fence or hit a cattle auction  ("Sometimes I'll take home some 30 cows to graze.") Lest anyone confuse him with a character on The big Valley, Brolin does have a slick of slicker in his. When he's down in L.A. for work "I'll go to a museum or to the Mint for jazz," he says. "I need to be in the city sometimes."

But while the dusty-shoed cosmopolitan dreams of someday living in the south of France or in Greece, it's his homestead that inspires. In the stillness, "my imagination can kind of fly," says Brolin, as he takes in the view from his bedroom window, from the wildflowers to the oat fields to the ducks flying above it all. In winter, those hills are Irish green. Fog rolls in from the ocean and hangs like a blanket." A heavy, happy sigh. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."