WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • Josh Brolin became a full time stock trader in his 30s as his Hollywood career struggled.
  • He said four years of trading earned him more than 20 years of acting had produced.
  • “No Country for Old Men” changed his career, though Brolin said he cleared about $30,000 from the film.
  • Brolin said his audition tape for “American Gangster” became the final audition of his career.

Josh Brolin’s path through Hollywood included an unexpected detour into full-time stock trading when acting opportunities had slowed to a crawl. The 58-year-old actor said he spent almost five years trading stocks during his 30s and made more money than he had across two decades of acting.

Brolin, the son of actor James Brolin, discussed his struggling career during an appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast. Despite landing an early role as Brand in “The Goonies,” Brolin said his career in Hollywood was going nowhere.

Getting that first major role was hardly easy. Brolin said he attended “350 auditions” before “The Goonies,” while people repeatedly discouraged him by saying, “It's not for you.”

The 1980s classic marked the first time Brolin had ever appeared in front of a camera. His nerves immediately took over, as he recalled, “I ruined the first day of shooting 'cause I couldn’t stop laughing.”

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Steven Spielberg stepped in during that difficult first day and told the young actor to “take a breath.” As Brolin recalled, Spielberg explained the practical concern behind the advice: “we need to get through this.”

After completing “The Goonies,” Brolin moved to New York to study acting and perform in theater. He said he “took it seriously,” but years of commitment did not quickly translate into sustained interest from Hollywood.

That long stretch continued until the Oscar-winning 2007 movie “No Country for Old Men.” Brolin described the experience bluntly, saying he “had 22 years of taking it seriously because nobody was interested until really I did ‘No Country,’ and then ‘No Country’ kind of changed s---.”

Before that turning point, Brolin found other ways to support himself. He worked as a landscaper for a year, then shifted into stock trading when he was 30 and continued doing it “for almost five years full-time.”

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The actor did not approach trading as a casual side project. Working from home, he used three screens with “four tabs per screen” and participated in both swing trading and day trading.

“I was really good at it,” Brolin said of his trading career. Financially, the work proved far more rewarding than the acting jobs he had completed up to that point.

“I made more money in those four years, really … than I had made in 20 years acting. But I didn’t really make hardly anything acting,” he said, contrasting the returns from trading with his limited Hollywood income.

Even the movie that changed the direction of his career did not deliver an enormous payday. Brolin said he received $100,000 for “No Country for Old Men,” but the amount he actually kept was considerably lower.

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“So I cleared what, $30,000? That’s not considered a great year,” Brolin said. The critical acclaim surrounding the movie nevertheless marked the point when his prospects in the film industry began improving rapidly.

While filming “No Country for Old Men,” Brolin submitted an audition tape for “American Gangster.” His son, who was 16 at the time, played Denzel Washington’s part in the recording.

That tape marked the end of Brolin’s long experience with auditions. “And that’s the last audition I ever did,” he said, signaling just how sharply his career changed after years of rejection and limited opportunities.

Brolin is now appearing in the thriller “Whalefall,” which follows a diver who is swallowed by a whale. He portrays the main character’s estranged father, decades after Hollywood’s lack of interest pushed him toward an entirely different profession.

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