But that Josh Brolin—face unbeaten by Santa Ana winds, limbs not yet thickened with age, voice pinched and overall just a little silly—is not the Josh Brolin of today. The Josh Brolin who walks into The Monkey Bar in New York City early one April morning seems to have wandered off the back lot of a mythic American past. He lopes with the slightly pigeon-toed, bow-legged gait of a cowboy. His arms, unusually long, pendulum slowly. Even his goatee, so often the facial hair of a clown, does little to besmirch the handsomeness of his face.
Much of this unshakeable cowboy aura is due to Brolin’s role as Llewelyn Moss in Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country For Old Men, a role so perfectly fit it uncovered what felt like the real man. Much of this is due to Brolin’s not inconsiderable skill as an actor. Much of it is determined by our own need for an American hero who wears denim, not Spandex, and who hides his face not behind a mask but under the shadow cast by the brim of a Stetson. But how much of it is true?
