‘I jump onto a group of people, young men, friendly, preppy boys drinking wine spritzers. They kick me. I swing wildly. I can’t feel anything.” This is the actor Josh Brolin describing one of his life’s many wild nights, on this occasion in Paris. “Find another bar. Blood on the face. Blood in the hair … More alcohol … Another fight. I fall in the Seine. I’m cold. I can’t remember where I live. I have a child.” Brolin was 23 at the time, and had spectacularly fallen off the wagon after three years of sobriety.
Movie stars are often damaged, but Brolin, now 56, is more damaged than most. His childhood was chaotic, reckless. He was nine when he first tried marijuana and 13
