Josh Brolin is one of them.
In his memoir, From Under the Truck, the acclaimed actor opens up about parts of his life that fans may never have known, including a chaotic childhood, addiction, his complicated relationship with his mother, and the moment that finally convinced him to stop drinking.
Brolin grew up in an unusual environment. His mother, Jane, was a wildlife conservationist, and the family lived around animals that most children would never encounter outside a zoo.
According to Brolin, those experiences were sometimes frightening.
He recalled that when he and his brother Jess were young, their mother would occasionally tell wild animals such as cougars, coyotes, or bobcats to chase them.
Although the memories sound terrifying, Brolin has been reluctant to describe his childhood simply as horrifying.
He has explained that his mother could be incredibly difficult, yet she was also someone he deeply loved and constantly wanted around.
That complicated relationship stayed with him.
Jane died in a car accident in 1995 at just 55 years old.
For years, particularly during the worst period of his addiction, Brolin convinced himself that 55 was a respectable age to die.
At the time, he believed someone who reached that age had already lived a long enough life.
Years later, after passing the age his mother had been when she died, his perspective changed completely.
Now older than Jane ever became, Brolin understands that 55 is not old at all.
The actor also grew up with another famous figure in his life. His father is actor James Brolin, who later married Barbra Streisand.
Brolin has spoken candidly about Streisand’s role as his stepmother and the direct, sometimes blunt way she challenged him.
He once recalled walking into his father’s home and asking for a glass of red wine.
Streisand looked at him and asked:
Brolin answered that he was, but still liked red wine.
Her response was simple:
Looking back, Brolin remembers that honesty with affection.
He has described Streisand’s style as a form of tough love, saying she was never afraid to tell him something uncomfortable if she believed he needed to hear it.
That directness became particularly meaningful because addiction had been part of Brolin’s life from an extraordinarily young age.
In his memoir, he says he first tried marijuana when he was nine years old.
By thirteen, he had experimented with LSD.
Substance use became increasingly serious as he got older, and alcohol eventually became one of the most destructive parts of his life.
One of the moments Brolin writes about most powerfully happened when his grandmother was dying.
She was 99 years old.
Brolin arrived at her bedside after waking up hungover on the streets, still smelling heavily of alcohol.
Standing beside his dying grandmother forced him to confront what his own life had become.
That moment changed everything.
It was 2013.
Brolin has remained sober for more than a decade since then.
The actor now speaks openly about how dramatically sobriety changed his life.
He added that whenever life becomes difficult, he knows alcohol would only make the situation worse.
For Brolin, sobriety also appears to have changed the way he thinks about aging.
At 56, he said he no longer views getting older as something frightening.
Instead, it has allowed him to slow down and stop feeling that he must constantly chase the next experience.
That realization carries extra weight given the way he once thought about his mother’s death.
There was a time when Brolin believed 55 represented a complete life.
Now, having lived beyond that age himself, he sees every additional year differently.
His memoir does not present his past as a neat story where every painful experience led automatically to something positive.
Instead, it reveals a childhood filled with contradictions, a long struggle with substance abuse, relationships shaped by both love and difficulty, and a recovery that ultimately required him to make a decision for himself.
Today, Brolin’s perspective seems far removed from the man who once woke up hungover before visiting his dying grandmother.
He has built more than a decade of sobriety and says he genuinely prefers the life he has now.
Behind the successful Hollywood career is a story of someone who spent years moving dangerously close to self-destruction before deciding there was still more life he wanted to experience.
And perhaps that is one of the most striking lessons in Brolin’s story.
Getting older was once something he barely expected to do.
Now it is something he has learned to appreciate.