Josh Brolin talks Thanos, Westerns, and The Goonies in playful interview with himself

Josh Brolin might play a lot of heavies, but the tough guy actor is surprisingly light on his feet.

Just look what happened when Brolin showed up to participate in the latest installment of Variety's Actors on Actors series, in which two buzzy performers engage in a friendly discussion about their lives and careers. He was meant to chat with Jeremy Renner, but when the Hawkeye star failed to show Brolin had no choice but to bifurcate himself and occupy both seats.

Sitting across from himself — one Brolin wears a hat, the other does not — the Outer Range star oscillated between earnestness, self-deprecation, and wry humor while unpacking some of his biggest roles — including Thanos, the supervillain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first decade.

"That was a huge undertaking for me," Brolin said of his turn as Thanos. "When you have my kind of gravitas, I understand why they would go, 'That guy could kind of bring some real weight to the purple dude,' but I didn't get it at first. I've always described it as doing blackbox theater in New York in the '70s or something." He noted with a smirk that his casting was just a "cameo" at first, but that he "blew everybody away so much that they ended up making two movies out of it."

The son of a renowned actor, Brolin also joked about feeling competitive with his own children — one of whom, Eden, is currently appearing on Yellowstone.

"The fact that my older daughter's an actress, she's already out of the house and she's doing her own thing. But my younger kids are really trying to take the limelight from me right now and it's tough, you know? I bring them to school, and when I'm walking down the street, when somebody says, 'Hey, man, I love your work,' it makes it all worth it for me. But right now, there's been a lot of, like, 'Oh, my God, what a cute little kid,' and I'm like, 'Hello?'"

Read the full interview, in which Brolin tells Brolin he was "so good" in The Goonies, over at Variety. You can also watch it below.

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