When director Oliver Stone asked Josh Brolin to join the impressive cast for WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, the actor knew he could bring a certain amount of insider knowledge to his role as Bretton James, a powerful and ruthless investment banker who preys on a vulnerable rival.
Not that Brolin, one of the hottest actors working today thanks to searing performances in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, MILK and playing George Bush in Stone’s biopic W, has inhabited the upper echelons of high finance where deals are done in their billions. But he has traded, successfully, on the stock markets and that at least provided a revealing glimpse into the cut throat world portrayed in WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS.
Read our Q+A below…
Q: You’ve traded on the markets yourself. Did you like the adrenaline rush you get from that?
A: No. People say that day trading is like gambling but I don’t see it like gambling at all because you have patterns you can learn, you have graphs you can study. For me it’s about behaviour: all I see is behaviour, fear, greed, fear, and greed. So I could take advantage of those moments of other people’s fear and greed.
Q: You didn’t have those emotions yourself?
A: Oh I do. But I learned how to trade from a very good friend of mine, who is a genius trader, and the first thing he said to me was ‘you have to have emotional discipline because that will be the biggest challenge every time you trade.’ And he’s right.
Q: So other people do yoga but you have your own disciplines.
A: (laughs). I guess, something like that. It’s an exercise for sure and once I learned that it worked in a lot of other places in my life. There are some places where I learned I didn’t need to be disciplined; I didn’t need to be protected.
But, actually, there is an adrenaline factor too when you are trading. Because whatever arrogance I had in moments of my emotional discipline is when it would hit me. Suddenly I was losing so much money like that (snaps fingers).
Q: How much?
A: I can’t tell you how much money. But there would be times when my fingers couldn’t go down fast enough because my stock was dying and after that I made a choice. I made sure I put a bottom and a top on the trades so I had a target and a stop loss that I wouldn’t go below.
Q: How long did you work as a trader?
A: I worked as a trader for about three and a half years and I still trade occasionally but not so much now because one, I’m busy and two, I don’t trust what is happening economically right now. For a while it was my main source of income but now it’s switched over. But for a while I was making much more money trading than I was acting. People ask ‘how did you do in the crash?’ Actually, I didn’t lose any money in the crash because we had created enough indicators to warn us.
Q: Were you acting at the same time that you were trading?
A: Yeah, I was acting but maybe only once a year or something like that.
Q: Do you think that the rules of trading have changed since the crash?
A: There were no rules then. Now they are starting to bring in rules. I don’t think it’s broken, I just think we are so economically uncertain right now. If Goldman Sachs stocks can go down 21 per cent based on news and no reality that’s scary. So who knows what’s going to happen. It’s too uncertain. I like the mattress right now: get the mattress and put the money under it (laughs).
Q: Do you know people who lost everything in the crash?
A: Yeah, family members. It’s horrible. Horrible. But you know, I can’t really talk about it like that because I didn’t lose money, I actually made money.
Q: So because you had experience of trading was your character in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps easier to find?
A: No, because it’s a different world. It’s high finance, it’s big money, and it’s a different thing because you are talking about trading with billions of dollars. So meeting these guys was more revealing and educational for me. It was interesting to see the little quirks these guys had, what things meant something to them. We’d get these guys drunk, taking them out to lunch and ordering two or three bottles of wine because with them there is always a façade in the beginning – it’s like dealing with politicians, it’s the same thing. They start out and say ‘well, what we’re working on right now is this and this.’ and you think ‘this is boring and I don’t believe it.’ Then the second bottle of wine went down and they would say ‘you want to know the truth?’ And I would say ‘yeah, man…’ And that’s what I care about. I try not to be disrespectful and tell people what they said but it’s very, very helpful for me to find out some kind of emotional truth. Their intentions may be good but then you find out what is really going on and I’d say ‘you really don’t like this, do you?’ And they would respond ‘I ****** hate it, I would love to get out of this business, it’s killing me and my family is falling apart.’ And you are like ‘wow, okay..’
Q: Was trading addictive for you?
A: No, absolutely not.
Q: You said you learned something about discipline that applied to other parts of your life. Could you explain?
A: I think acting, first and foremost. I think it’s very important for me to be professional and put myself out on the line and I think with acting you are basically being paid for humiliation.
Q: Why do you think that it’s humiliation?
A: Well, because that’s basically what we do. You go out and you are crying or you are laughing unnaturally – you are creating a scenario and you have to believe in that scenario when you are doing it. You know, it’s not easy for me to reach into that evil part of myself because it’s me who is playing it. I can blame it on a character but ultimately it’s me. You can create cosmetics to make it look different than yourself but ultimately it’s your own emotional life that’s lending to the character. So if I’m looking at Shia like I want to kill him and his family, it’s part of me and I’m asking ‘what inside me has the ability to do that?’ And then to allow it to be seen and to be judged on the set and to put it away…people always know ‘Josh is capable of that.’ well, it’s a very strange life, man.
Q: But you are the son of an actor so didn’t you know that was part of the job?
A: No, because my father is very different to me. His whole trajectory was very different from mine. I got into theatre, he’s never done a play, and he was a TV star. He got kind of thrown in there as this tall, 6ft 4 inch, extremely handsome man and then kind of had to learn his way around that. It’s a very different deal – I’m not 6ft 4 inches. I’m much more simian than my father.
Q: You’ve worked with Oliver Stone twice now – on W and on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. What do you like about working with him?
A: We work very well together. I loved everything about working with Oliver because he is a very solid entity who will do anything to make it as organic as it can be in terms of an actor’s performance. I think he cares about people. He does these movies which are in some way social commentaries that have to do with people or the underdog. Wall Street is about people who got slammed by big money or by investment banks, who were preying on the very vulnerable, very obvious thing that we all have, of wanting to seem more valuable than we all are. That was horrible. And he has taken that and he is saying ‘look don’t forget to properly question authority because they may be preying on your weaknesses,’ which they did. I loved working with Oliver.
Q: Going from working with Oliver Stone to Woody Allen must represent quite a contrast in styles?
A: Well, you know there are also similarities. They are both obsessed with filmmaking and storytelling. I’ve been a fan of Woody Allen’s for a long time but I was more familiar with his books than his movies in the beginning. I had Woody sign my copy of Side Effects at the end of the movie, which was like the greatest thing for me. I also got Cormac McCarthy to sign a copy of his book. I remember Javier (Bardem) and I had been doing a scene and we had all this blood on us. I took the book and smeared it so that it had some of the blood on it and then I got Cormac to sign it. I love it. So Side Effects was a book that I had when I went to New York to study acting for the first time and I was staying at the Long Acre Hotel on 45th Street, which was a shithouse then. I was in a little tiny room and I was reading Side Effects and that was my introduction to New York. It was much more exciting, strangely enough, to get him to sign that book than it was acting in two of his movies (laughs).
Q: A few years back you said that you had to sell your farm but that you hoped to get it back one day. Did you manage that yet?
A: Yeah, that was four almost five years ago. No I didn’t but I might in the future.
Q: Did you sell it for financial reasons?
A: I wasn’t broke but I wasn’t able to sustain the ranch with the money that I was making based on the fact that I didn’t want to do movies that I didn’t want to do anymore. I was watching these movies that I would do and I just said to myself ‘I would rather not act.’ Not that I was better than the movie or anything like that, but I just wasn’t satisfied. There was nothing satisfying about it.
Q: So was that a real turning point? Because now you are working with great directors like Stone and Woody Allen.
A: Well, I don’t need to trade. When I trade it’s out of choice now, not out of necessity. I love it. And you know I’m so grateful to be working with these great filmmakers. I love it. It wasn’t like No Country For Old Men came along and I didn’t work for two years. It came along and I made sure that I took advantage of that moment. We’re producing now; I’m directing next year; I’ve got my theatre company and we’re writing plays. I also have a TV show that I’m producing and writing with David Milch – not that I’m going to be in, just producing. I’m also meeting Tim Burton to talk about doing a project together. For me, essentially – and this sounds so horrible and every actor will be like ‘ah..’ – I’m a businessman and that’s what I do and I know that I do that well. I was a numbers guy, a math guy when I was a kid and that’s what I like doing.
Q: So the acting was harder for you?
A: Yes, it was. I didn’t come on the scene like Carey Mulligan or somebody and everybody went ‘wow!’ They said ‘he’s okay..’ So I had to learn that trade and that’s humbling. You know my agent is very proud and last night we had a great time and he said something that was one of the greatest compliments I ever got. He said ‘yes, you are my client and I am your agent, but you are my favourite actor.’ He didn’t need to say that. He’s already my agent, but that was very nice to hear. But at the same time I said ‘this will change, this will become something else.’ So it’s great to have a nice run and then maybe I’ll produce more and then maybe I’ll do more acting. We’ll see what the future holds.
Q: So when fans come to you and ask for an autograph how do you react to that?
A: I understand it because of what I just told you. I doubt it happens, but if I’m somebody’s Woody Allen then sweet. If the work that I’m doing inspires somebody that’s wonderful. I had people inspire me. Anthony Zerbe is an actor who has been around for a long time and he was a massive inspiration for me and without him, I don’t know, maybe I would still be in jail. He was a wonderful guide for me and a great friend so he was the one who started to give me theatre stuff. You know ‘I want you to play a Porto Rican painter.’ ‘I want you to play an Irish guy who just got out of the seminary.’ He saw some character actor in me that I didn’t know existed.
Q: Are you an inspiration to your own kids in that way?
A: My daughter (Eden) is interested in acting and has much more talent than my father or my stepmother or me or – anybody. She is like Carey Mulligan. She has that natural talent. She just did a play and it blew my mind and her Mom was sitting there crying. In the beginning when she wanted to act, I asked ‘why do you want to do that? It’s just rejection, rejection, and rejection. Are you sure you want to do that? You are not only the son of, you are the daughter of and the granddaughter of.’’ But she has drive and I appreciate that so I will support her in every way that I can. I won’t make it easy for her but I will support her.
Q: Did you direct her in a short film recently?
A: Yes, I directed her in a small film called X – so it’s my fault (laughs). I’m like ‘why do you want to do that? But hey, would you do this small thing for me…?’ (laughs). And she was great, really great. I don’t think the short was great, but she was great. But my son no, he’s an artist. He’s so talented too – he composes, he does draws. Like when I have a character to work on, I’ll sit and talk to him about it and he’ll sit there and sketch it. When I did Grindhouse I didn’t want to be big for that but he drew a sketch with a guy with a stomach and little boobs hanging down and I was like ‘Okay, so I guess I’m going to eat a lot.’ (laughs). It was good. But he came up with some great ideas – in Planet Terror there was a thermometer that my character used to gauge his anger and that was my son’s idea. He drew it and I was like ‘what’s that?’ and he goes ‘oh that’s a thermometer so that when your guy is getting angry he can see the red coming up.’ I said ‘that’s a brilliant idea man.’ My kids are incredible – I’m blown away by my kids.
Q: Do you talk to them about your work?
A: If they don’t like something, they don’t need to say anything. I’ll go ‘how do you like the movie?’ and they’ll say ‘it’s good’ (laughs). My son is incapable of bullshit, he doesn’t have it – it’s like a chromosome that’s missing. But on the other hand when he saw No Country – we saw it together in a screening room and nobody else was there – he got in the car and he didn’t speak for 10 minutes. I was dying. I was like ‘dude, come on, you have to say something.’ and he said ‘there are no words. I’ve never experienced anything like that, ever.’
WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS is released on DVD and Blu-ray on the UK on January 31st 2011.
