Josh Brolin

In fact, I am so happy to be turning 40 and finally having a reason to take responsibility for my own behavior. It\'s also worked for me in terms of my physical appearance and emotional make-up and people entrusting me to bring the things a role deserves. I don\'t know whether that\'s depth or being a curmudgeon or what.

It just seems to me that from the Republican perspective, there\'s so much focus on how bad the other side is, as opposed to their running on their own trajectory within the issues.

When the AIDS epidemic first started there were people who said, \"Well, if there weren\'t gays, then we wouldn\'t have this problem. It\'s got to be because of them - let it be them instead of us.\" But when you educate yourself about it, you can\'t help but realize that we\'re all affected by it. I think that things like that just become too daunting for people.

That\'s what\'s great about Howard Zinn. Here\'s a guy who says, \"Look, democracy doesn\'t come from above - it comes from below.\" The only way change will ever happen is if we speak up, and we have to know that it actually has an impact. Because we have a lot more power than we think we do, I think.

I read \"Milk\" and immediately I was very emotional after reading it and then I saw the documentary - the one that Rob Epstein did - and I said that\'s it. I saw it with my daughter and that was it. This thing is a different thing. It\'s like I\'ve been offered these kind of superhero movies or \"Terminator\" or whatever those movies are and I just go ahh.

You\'ve got this guy who refuses to die for some reason whether it be a physical or metaphysical reason or spiritual reason so you can do anything. You can kill off anybody and you can still bring them back because he\'s kind of half there and half in reality, you know?

Rebellion, just to be clear, can mean holding onto some of your own integrity, of not playing into the idea of sensationalism. We all have our moments, and that\'s your guys\' job - to take those moments and make them turgid, gaseous, make them big, and it\'s bigger than the person is. When you start believing your own press, that\'s when it gets really sad.

I\'ve never gotten bitter about where I was at in my career. I\'ve always earned enough money to put my kids through school and eat and all that, so I was never one of those guys who said, \"Why am I not in this other position? Why am I not that other guy? Why am I me?\"

I\'d heard rumors about Oliver Stone before we went to work on and I don\'t get it. To me, he\'s one of the most sensitive directors. He is just fascinated by why people act in the ways that they do. His movies are an excuse to explore that idea, and he wants to work with people who are as passionate about exploring it as he is. So we got along brilliantly.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. \"I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union.\"

I don\'t have a favorite I like and then I\'ll go and watch \"Days of Heaven\" and I go how beautiful is that. So I think, at least my idea, was lets bring something again that\'s primitive and guttural but then let\'s also do something beautiful where you\'re outside and this isn\'t a typical western setting. It\'s lush. It\'s green. It\'s beautiful.

Regardless of whether there was ballot manipulation or not, you still have 50 million people who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. And why? Because he\'s fallible? Because he reminds you of us? That\'s what we do. We are hiring these people. They don\'t hire themselves. It\'s irresponsible to disregard this guy as some bumbling, blathering idiot who has no intelligence whatsoever.

Back then they had Elvis and they thought Elvis was so risqué. So everyone has their perception to what innocence is.

I know that, for me, working with people like Robert Rodriguez and Ridley Scott and the Coen brothers and Oliver Stone and Gus Van Sant was so much easier than working with a lot of the people I had worked with before, because with these guys, there\'s not a lot of ego involved. It\'s all about the work. It\'s all about how to make the story better. So at the end of the day, you feel a trust that you usually don\'t feel - or at least I haven\'t felt in the past with most people.

At least George W. Bush feels like - and I\'ve heard him say it - \"You can\'t judge me now, because look at Abraham Lincoln. When he was in the middle of that war and 600,000 people died, he was vilified for the Gettysburg Address because they felt it was too short and almost insulting, and now you look back and it\'s considered one of the great speeches of all time and he\'s considered one of the great presidents of all time.\"

Fear - there\'s always fear. You re-create yourself in every movie, don\'t you?

The next couple of jobs will determine, at least from a business point of view, if I\'m a guy who\'s actually the real thing or I\'m a guy who\'s had a nice moment.

Football? Forget it. I didn\'t have that thing inside me where I wanted to smash against somebody and watch them break. I was too sensitive for that and disliked being that sensitive.

Look, I\'m going to take full advantage of this situation just because I love working with great filmmakers. But I\'ve been around for a while, and I\'m not going to play into the hype that I\'m some great, you know, discovery.

W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.

Suddenly, I'm in movies that people are excited about, and that is a nice change.

It takes me 10 minutes to get ready to go out, and that includes the shower.

I'm really, really lucky. I was given my dad's good genes.

I love the competitive part of stocks. A lot of fear and greed, that's all it is. All I see is green and red.

It's probably a bit of a power trip when you befriend somebody enough that they trust you to tell you things.

You have to be okay with wins and losses. You can't just be looking for the wins and, when the losses happen, you can't buy more and more because you're sure it's going to bounce. We call that revenge trading.

I remember at the premiere of my second movie I started crying. I thought, I'm so bad that I either have to stop this and do something else or learn what I'm doing.

The only way change will ever happen is if we speak up, and we have to know that it actually has an impact. Because we have a lot more power than we think we do, I think.

When I was in jail I could only think about what the average person has to go through - the person who has no power to go to the press or no money to hire a lawyer.

My dad didn't often bring me to the set, being an actor himself, so my infancy as an actor was wracked with a lot of giggles and nervousness.