15 November 2024
Josh Brolin became embroiled in a tense stand-off with his stepmother Barbra Streisand during his battle with alcohol addiction.
Josh Brolin has recalled a tense stand-off with Barbra Streisand over his drinking
The actor - whose father James Brolin married the singer/actress in 1998 - spent years battling substance abuse issues but has been sober since 2013 and he's now revealed he had a very difficult conversation with Barbra when he visited her home and asked for a glass of wine.
In a piece for the Wall Street Journal - adapted from his memoir 'From Under the Truck' - Josh wrote: "My father, James Brolin, married Barbra in 1998, when I was 30, and we were all going to live happily ever after. That was it. That was the ticket.
"Well into our happily-ever-after I walked into their house one day: 'I’ll have a glass of wine', I said. She looked at me and cocked her head, so I repeated myself. 'I’ll have a glass of red wine, please.'
"She took a slow breath then hit me with it: 'Aren’t you an alcoholic?' It was a pretty ballsy thing to say ... She always had a way of washing her tongue with a bulls*** cleanser before she talked with me."
He added of the conversation:"[I said] 'I’m an alcoholic, but I like red wine'. [She said] 'You shouldn’t drink'."
Josh's mom Jane divorced James in the mid-1980s but died in a car accident in 1995 and the 'No Country for Old Men' star admits his stepmother was just trying to help him as best she could.
He added: "Who wants to be a stepmother ... ? Nobody. It connotes evil intentions: drastic compensations for cosmetic insecurities; misery loves company; me me me syndrome. Barbra wasn’t that. She wanted a family. She was being kind ...
"Barbra never saw that guy I was. She was never privy to those things that landed me in jail or in fights or figuring out why I was waking up on sidewalks with my T-shirt wrapped around my otherwise naked waist. She just wanted to give me some plain old-fashioned mothering. I had to get used to it."
Josh went to rehab in 2013 following an arrest for public intoxication and the breakdown of his marriage to Diane Lane and he admits he realised he was on a "destructive path" and needed to turn his life around.
He told the Guardian newspaper: "Well, it was another turning point. It made me think of a lot of things. My mum dying when I was in my 20s.
"All the impact that had on me that I hadn't moved past; I was always such a momma's boy. But I realised that I was on a destructive path. I knew that I had to change and mature. It was like I stepped back and saw the hamster wheel."
English (US) ·