Josh Brolin is getting in touch with his wild side.
“The Goonies” star recalled growing up around animals on his family’s ranch in Paso Robles, California, and shared how his late mother was “obsessed” with “all kinds” of creatures, including “big cats, wolves, bears.”
During a recent podcast interview, Brolin remembered his late mother had a bold personality.
‘DUNE’ STAR JOSH BROLIN TRASHES HIS OLD MOVIE, SAYS HE ‘WON’T EVER STOP S—–ING ON’ IT
“My mother had zero filter, so as crazy as she was, and she was absolutely f—ing nuts,” he said on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast.
“She was a way station for all animals that had been illegally taken out of the wild, and they tried to domesticate them. She’d find those people, have them jailed, nurse them back to health and either rerelease them or find the most habitable zoo.”
Although Brolin’s mother was only 5-foot-2, he pointed out that she was from Corpus Christi, Texas, and “had a voice as deep and severe as any man’s voice you’ve ever heard in your life.”
The “Dune” actor continued to explain that his late mother suggested one of her workers on the ranch, Bud Applehand, personally feed a “lion with a big mane” after the animal wasn’t eating normally.
“’Look, he’s not eating. You have to go in there and show him how to eat. You have to sit next to him and show him. Put your face in the bowl and show him how to. He needs help.’”
After Brolin said his dad just “walked away” from the situation, the worker was hesitant to feed the lion.
“Bud goes, ‘You just want me to get in the thing and just sit down?’ I mean, he didn’t know any better, poor guy. And so he goes in there, and she goes, ‘Well, sit next to him,’” Brolin recalled.
“’Now, put the bowl up to your face and then just lower your head like you’re eating.’ So, he’s like, this is a tough, tough dude, country guy,” he added.
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Brolin said he watched the lion open his mouth with “four- five-inch … long fangs” toward the worker’s thigh, and then slowly closed its mouth around the man’s thigh.
“You hear the rip of the jeans and you hear … Bud’s going, ‘His teeth are going into my leg. His teeth are going into my leg.'”
Brolin explained that when his late mother would get “nervous,” she had a “condition where she would laugh hysterically.”
“So, you hear, ‘The teeth are going into my leg, the teeth are going into my leg,’ and she’s trying to talk, but she can’t because there’s just wheezing with this laugh.”
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After his mother attempted to shout, “Don’t move,” while laughing too hard, the lion “just kept its teeth in there for a while.”
Brolin said after the lion finally opened its mouth and released the worker’s leg, the man shouted, “Get me the f— outta here.”
The Hollywood actor added that his brother had 60 stitches in his leg from his dealings with animals and explained that since they were kids, they “had to do” what their mother instructed.
Brolin said he recalled feeding a wolf and cleaning animal cages at the age of 8.
“It was a different deal, man,” he said. “Then you go out into life, and you become an actor. It’s all good.”
