Josh Brolin recently opened up about a rather traumatizing childhood memory that has to do with his mother. While many celebrities have opened up about their childhood memories, Brolin’s story sounds like it’s straight from ‘The Lion King‘.
He had a mother who was obsessed with wild animals including lions, tigers, and bears, ultimately exposing the actor to such wildness as well. In a recent interview, he shared an incident that he could never forget. Here’s all about it.
Josh Brolin’s Mother Was Obssessed With Wild Animals
Appearing on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s SiriusXM Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Josh Brolin recalled growing up among wild animals like lions and tigers as a formidable wildlife rehabilitator. He revealed this one particular incident he could never forget when his mother almost fed a man to a lion.
“My mother had zero filter, so as c**zy as she was — and she was absolutely f—ing nuts — she gave something to me that allows me to open the pores of whatever filters exist, and I’m really grateful to her for that,” he said talking about his mother who was “animal obsessed” and worked for California Department of Fish and Game.
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“She was a way station for animals that had been illegally taken out of the wild [by people who try] to domesticate them,” Brolin explained. “She’d find those people, have them jailed, nurse [the animals] back to health and either rerelease them or find the most habitable zoo. So we had a lot of animals growing up. Big cats, wolves, bears, all kinds of stuff.”
Josh Brolin Recalls The Horrifying Lion Encounter
A man named Bud who worked on the family ranch in Paso Robles, California, bugged off more than he could chew during the week with a lion that had been staying with the Brolins. “She told him, ‘Look, he’s not eating. You have to go in there and show him how to eat. You have to sit next to him and show him. Put your face in the bowl and show him, he needs help,'” Brolin recalled.
“Bud goes, ‘You want me to get in the thing and sit down?’ I mean, he didn’t know any better, poor guy, so he goes in there,” Brolin said. “And she goes, ‘Well, sit next to him.’ And the [lion]’s just sitting there and she goes, ‘Now put the bowl up to your face and then lower your head like you’re eating.’ And then he gets up and the lion — you know how they look up like a dog and they just go one eye, the other eye — moves forward and she goes, ‘Oh good, he’s moving.’“
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Brolin continued that the lion moved towards Bud and he opened his mouth with five four inches of fangs and slowly closed his mouth around the guy’s thigh. He shouted for help but Josh Brolin’s mom was laughing hysterically as a coping mechanism for her nervousness.
Brolin added “She’s trying to talk, but she can’t because there’s just wheezing with this laugh and she’s got a Cool King in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other hand. And she’s trying to say, ‘Don’t move, don’t move,’ but she can’t because she’s laughing so hard. The lion just kept its teeth in there for a while and looked up a couple of other times, he didn’t move”.
Eventually, the lion moved away after slowly lifting his mouth and went back to where he was.
