No Country For Old Men finally thrust actor Josh Brolin into the spotlight he deserves. But is playing President George W Bush in Oliver Stone�s new film, W, a career risk worth taking?
By Will Lawrence

Are you seeing this, man? So far the Dow is down 354 points; Apple's just dropped 17%." I am catching up with Josh Brolin just as the ill winds of the current financial crisis are beginning to stir. For Brolin, this is an immediate cause for concern; the 40-year-old actor may boast a film career that stretches back across more than two decades - from The Goonies in 1985 to this year's Best Picture Oscar-winner, No Country For Old Men - but a portion of his future is invested in the dizzying world of the international money markets. A little over three years ago, Brolin launched his own trading and real estate company. He is understandably anxious.

"After a 500-point drop it was obvious that it was going to have some kind of bounce and then after the bounce you go, OK what is going to happen?' So we played the bounce a little yesterday, you know what I mean?"

Thankfully, Brolin doesn't see the blank look washing across my face as I pretend to be fiscally aware and mutter something about Americans blaming the outgoing administration. "I hope they do," spits Brolin, almost before I finish my sentence. "While I don't think they're entirely responsible, because of the war I think that they have created a lot of uncertainty for everybody. But you've got to realise that while Clinton did very well for the economy, a lot of my Republican friends say that wasn't because of Clinton, it was because of George Bush Snr. These things are always more complex than they seem."

Brolin, of course, has an immediate interest in the complexities of the American political system, and the outgoing administration in particular; his latest on-screen role sees him adopting George W Bush's cowboy swagger in director Oliver Stone's most recent film, W, which picks through the life of the much-maligned president. For Brolin, it's been a monumental challenge, requiring a zealous devotion that has surprised even the actor himself.

"This is a much lighter film than No Country For Old Men, but making it was completely the opposite," he smiles. "I have a tonne of stories about No Country - it was an incredibly tense and serious movie, and yet working on it was hilarious. I had such a laugh with Javier Bardem. Yet when I went to W, I had a fear. I became so obsessed with doing a decent job, with Bush's voice and body language, and with all of the shit I felt I was focusing on, I probably went too far with it. So all I did was work and then I'd come home with my assistant and study for four or five hours, get up and do it again."

That dedication seems to have paid off. The film has already opened in America - Stone cleverly choosing a release date smack in the middle of the presidential election campaign - and while reviews have been mixed, the critics have been united in their praise for the leading man. The controversy that they hoped for, however, is absent. Unlike his previous politically charged films, JFK and Nixon, W is one of Stone's lighter works, a satirical look at the man behind the cartoon character that we all know and loathe.

"Before making this film," Brolin says, "I wasn't a fan of Bush, not in the least. I wasn't a fan at all and, like a lot of other people, I had a very myopic perception of him. Now I don't. My opinion of the administration didn't change, and neither did my thoughts on Republicanism, but my opinion of the man changed. That happens when you humanise someone; you see the bigger picture.

"And contrary to what I thought, George W Bush is not an idiot. It's just not possible. He had the ability to corral 50 million people to vote for him. There's a general misconception about him. It's the same with me. There's a cosmetic perception. Just because Bush isn't a great public speaker and gets his words twisted, people think he's a fool. That's just the immediate painting of him, and it's the same with me too. It's all too easy to write a catchy headline for an inaccurate article: Boozing, Brawling, Brolin'."

That alliterative headline spilled from the pages of the US tabloids the day after I first met Brolin on the set of W in Shreeveport, Louisiana. He was arrested during a bar-room fight downtown, the night of the production's wrap party. "I wish I could say more about it," Brolin tells me during a conversation later on. "We're waiting to find out what'll happen. Naturally, the honesty of the story will reveal itself. In the beginning it came out as Boozing, Brawling, Brolin', but that's not true. And I will say this: I'd do it again tomorrow if I were presented with the same problem."

Specifics of this incident aside, Brolin - much like his version of Bush - enjoyed a rowdy youth. Indeed, his reputation took a knock in 2002 when the police were called to a domestic incident involving the actor and his actress wife, Diane Lane. She declined to press charges - the couple's publicist described it as a "misunderstanding". Still, if, as he claims, suggestions that he is a fighting man are wide of the mark, then metaphorically, at least, they seem on the money. Again, much like his version of Bush, Brolin is tenacious, relying on gut instinct and a willingness to take a gamble. When Stone set about casting W, many Hollywood players declined, worried about being linked in any way with the current administration. Brolin, however, rolled the dice.

Sitting quietly on the Shreeveport set in between takes, puffing on a Marlboro Light (he has since quit, going "cold turkey"), Brolin highlights the misconceptions that have blighted his professional life. After debuting in perennially popular kids' adventure The Goonies, he spent more than a decade languishing in roles that failed to match his natural talents. Brolin worked consistently, but was cast in plenty of mediocre fare - The Road Killers (1994), Bed Of Roses (1996) and Nightwatch (1997) to name but a few. In 2007, however, everything changed. First up came the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double-header Grindhouse, in which Brolin teamed up with Rodriguez for the better portion of the double bill, zombie spoof Planet Terror, as the infected Dr Block. He followed that with a strong supporting role in Ridley Scott's Harlem crime epic, American Gangster, playing one of the crooked cops in Russell Crowe's precinct.

It was his next outing, however, that proved his biggest break to date. With Cormac McCarthy's adaptation No Country For Old Men, the plaudits, and indeed the Oscars, went to Javier Bardem and the Coen brothers; but Brolin's contribution was key, his troubled character a swirl of fear and confusion. After W, he will be back on our screens at the start of next year in Milk, playing Dan White, the man who murdered Harvey Milk, the first openly gay official elected in California.

"That was a fascinating role," says Brolin. "Milk was the first blatantly gay man elected into public office and then 10 months later he's dead. It's a moving story. You don't need to like the characters you play; that's true of Bush and Dan White. You just need to find an understanding. And these are the types of characters you want to play when you start your career way back when."

Brolin was born into a family of actors. His father, James Brolin, is best known for recurring roles in TV soaps Marcus Welby MD and Hotel, as the leading man in the original movie version of The Amityville Horror, and as the husband (since 1998) of Barbra Streisand. His mother, Jane Cameron Agee, was an aspiring actress who divorced Brolin Snr in 1984 and died 11 years later in a car accident. Growing up with parents in the business, however, proved a deterrent for young Josh.

"It's true," he concedes. "I wanted to be a lawyer. I studied it all through high school. I studied it on my own. I was fascinated by it for reasons I understand now." He laughs, referencing his own recent stint in the clink. "I had emotional foresight! Seriously, though, I grew up in a country town with a very small-town mentality. My dad was probably the only actor in a 500-mile radius and some people at one point gave me a very hard time on the bus to school. I tried to use my dad's name, like it had any weight whatever, and got taught a huge lesson, very quickly ... a huge physical lesson. I remember thinking, Why would I get into a business if, when you mention it, you get your ass kicked? This doesn't seem like something I'm interested in.' But I did get interested in it."

That interest was fostered by a performance in his school's version of A Streetcar Named Desire, and while the young Californian went on to study law, he also pursued the Hollywood dream. After starring as Sean Astin's older brother in The Goonies, he secured a role on 21 Jump Street (the small-screen vehicle that propelled Johnny Depp to stardom) before causing something of a stir playing a youthful Wild Bill Hickok on TV series Young Riders. He didn't get another big movie break until David O Russell's Flirting With Disaster in 1996, after a string of innocuous projects and a failed four-year marriage to actress Alice Adair, which produced two children (Trevor, born in 1988, and Eden, born in 1994).

Russell's film promised an impending stardom and, while that didn't actually materialise until now, Brolin regards it as a key moment in his career. "Flirting With Disaster was the first film where I sat down and watched and said, Thank God I'm in this movie'," he says. "This was a role where I wasn't being pigeonholed as some kind of jock. You know, it was always Hey, why don't you play the coach?' "Eventually, even after that film, I did feel that I wasn't getting the opportunities I deserved. I worked with Woody Allen on Melinda And Melinda, but even then it wasn't enough. I'd get to work with Woody, but just for two to three weeks, as opposed to two to three months. So there came a point where I said, I love doing what I do but it's frustrating at times'. So I started my trading business and I started my real estate business. I decided that I'd rather not act and instead wait to see if I could work with better people. At that time, I was coming home after a day's work, doing some job that I didn't want to do, and I was just pissed off. That was about three years ago."

Since making that decision, Brolin's screen career has blossomed. "I guess it must be working," he smiles. And if it ever fails, he's always got his businesses to fall back on, right? "Right," he laughs. "If they're still there! In this climate, who knows?" Chances are his businesses will survive. After all, we should ignore the misconceptions: to borrow from the vocabulary of the man he's just played, Josh Brolin is not to be "misunderestimated".

W opens on November 7