If one asked the general public to identify Josh Brolin a few years ago, many would have shrugged their shoulders. A few might have remembered Brolin as the jock older brother in Richard Donner’s classic “The Goonies.” Others might have recalled his role in the less-classic “Hollow Man.”

Brolin’s star turn in this week’s release “No Country for Old Men,” as well as his commanding performances in Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster” and Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” may cause today’s moviegoer to think that the actor has finally made a return to cinema. But in fact, Brolin has been working steadily ever since his 1985 debut.

“The difference [now] is that people are actually seeing these movies,” Brolin said at a recent round-table interview with The Crimson.

At the interview, Brolin revealed how personal tragedy led to eerily deep connections with his character in his latest film.

‘NOVEL’ IDEA

Brolin’s first exposure to Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” came unexpectedly.

While shooting “Grindhouse” in Texas, Brolin started reading the book on a friend’s recommendation. Now, the actor says he has read almost all of McCarthy’s novels, even though he never imagined a film adaptation in the works.

“I was amazed by the book,” he says, and especially its protagonist, Llewellyn Moss. But his amazement initially remained personal. “I never thought…’Who’s doing the movie, who’s going to play Moss?’” Brolin says.

Shortly after “Grindhouse” filming ended, Brolin learned that he would, in fact, play Moss in a film adaptation from Academy Award winning duo Joel and Ethan Coen.

In the story, Llewellyn Moss, a mild-mannered Texan welder, discovers a large cache of drugs and money at the horrific desert site of a drug deal gone bad. He chooses to take the money and must evade the pursuit of a terrifying man guided only by a twisted moral code.

TROUBLING PARALLEL

But two days after being cast, tragedy struck.

Brolin was in a motorcycle crash that, in addition to shattering his collar bone, helped him connect with the role on a personal level.

“The thing about the motorcycle accident is that I didn’t see it coming, and I always thought that I saw it coming. It’s the same theme as Cormac’s book,” he says, in reference to the arbitrary incidents that propel the story forward. “It’s what happens to Llewellyn.”

Despite the film’s dark and bleak tone, Brolin remembers his time on set with the other actors as a positive experience.

“We had a lot of fun,” he recalls. “It was important to us. We wanted to get away from the tense feeling the script was about.”

Two elements particularly challenged Brolin.

The Coen brothers decided to use almost no background score throughout the entire film, a tactic which injects even the most mundane scene with a dose of cinematic tension.

Brolin says that, because of this situation, he scrutinized his every move, even his breathing, as there would be no score to help tell the audience what to feel.

“What does an inhale mean, now that there’s no music?” he asks.

In addition, Llewellyn Moss spends a large chunk of the film by himself, on the run—another challenge.

“The fear is that I am going to be boring as an actor. How much should Llewellyn talk to himself in the desert?” he asks. “We didn’t want him to [seem] crazy.”

‘ONLY ABOUT THE WORK’

Brolin says the Coens’ respectful treatment towards both the actors and each other impressed him and pushed him to develop his technique.

“Everyone, especially actors, we all have insecurities, and [a typical director] will make you feel bad about them or put you on a pedestal you don’t belong on,” he says. “But the great thing about working with the Coens was their lack of ego, so it becomes only about the work. You become a worker.”

And Brolin has worked. This past year, he has acted in four films, and has written and directed a three-hour play. That jock older brother from “The Goonies” seems to have left the Goon Docks for good.