Josh Brolin Was Tempted to Think Steven Spielberg Was a ‘Dick’ During ‘The Goonies’

Josh Brolin is looking back on the advice Steven Spielberg gave him at age 16.

Brolin, who had a breakout role in “The Goonies” which Spielberg created the story for, recalled during SiriusXM’s “Literally! With Rob Lowe” podcast how Spielberg advised him to “just act” instead of overthink the part.

 ”I think ‘Goonies’ was quite an accident,” Brolin said of being cast in the film. “I went in there, they pulled the Brolin thing: ‘Are you [James] Brolin’s kid, yeah, OK, you want to be an actor, huh?’ So instead of that nepotistic thing, they looked at me and were like, ‘Oh yeah? So act.’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m not going to help you.’ So I studied, I got Stanislavski books, Grotowski, ‘The Poor Theater,’ and Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theater of Cruelty.’ I stayed in a bookstore 90 percent of the time. Just reading, reading, reading. Then I met [director] Dick Donner and Steven Spielberg, and I just looked right for that part.”

Brolin continued, “You look at [co-star] Sean Astin, you look at the type of movie it is…I looked like a bit of a bad boy, but sort of a jock, and I was in good shape, so they were like, ‘That’s the guy.’ I went back six times, just so they could make sure, and then I did it.”

During production, though, Brolin realized that his “bad boy” look was more important this his feedback on the script or ideas for added scenes.

“I was on the set, reading all this stuff with these tiny wooden trailers. I came to Steven at some point, we were in one of the tunnels, and I said, ‘Hey, Steven, can I talk to you for a second?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, sure,'” Brolin said, adding that he was a “really dumb” teenager already because he had “missed a lot of school.”

Brolin added, “So I said [to Steven], ‘Hey, don’t you think that the tunnels kind of represent my mother’s womb? And what if we film me climbing up the tunnel, but really I’m trying to cut that emotional umbilical cord of my mother, and I could have tears coming down my face?’ I went into this whole thing, and I was getting all excited because he was nodding his head, and then I waited. And then he looked at me and he said, ‘Why don’t you just act? Just say the words on the page, you’ll be fine.’ And I could have been like, ‘Dick!’ But I didn’t, I was like, ‘Oh, totally. I got it.'”

Brolin’s “Goonies” co-star Ke Huy Quan previously said that there were “numerous scripts” for a possible “Goonies” sequel, but that “there was not one script that felt it could live up to what the original was.” Ke also pointed to the fact that original director Richard Donner passed away in 2021.

“Sadly we lost the captain of our ship Dick Donner,” Ke said, “and I really don’t know if there’s going to be a ‘Goonies 2,’ but I would really love to revisit the character of Data if there is an opportunity.”