Act of love

Josh Brolin isn't one who's shy about tackling intense characters.

The Oscar-nominated US actor has played a sinister doctor in Planet Terror (2007), a war veteran who's on the run after stealing from a drug cartel in No Country For Old Men (2007) and a obsessive, vengeful prisoner in Oldboy (2013).

Brolin, 46, plays yet another morally ambiguous man in the Jason Reitman-directed drama Labor Day, this time an intimidating escaped convict who convinces an agoraphobic single mother (Kate Winslet) to let him hide in the house she shares with her teenage son.

Opening here tomorrow, the drama also sees Brolin showing his sensitive side as he romances Winslet by being the man she seeks.

He speaks to M about playing extreme characters and his roller-coaster career at the Mayfair Hotel in London, UK, last October.

It's been a very fruitful working period for you, with high-profile titles like Labor Day, Oldboy, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For and Inherent Vice. Does it feel like a good time (in your career)?

Brolin: I don't think of it like that, (but) yes, on hindsight, I'm really grateful to be working.

But more so, I'm grateful for when (Inherent Vice director) Paul Thomas Anderson calls you and asks you, "I may have some work for you, are you interested?"

It just makes no sense to me because I worked 20-something years being a blue-collar actor, who is trying to get the next job, whatever that next job was.

I just needed to feed my kids and put them through school.

Honestly, when you look at a poster and it says "Labor Day, Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet (inset)", it's not Kate Winslet and (gestures to opposite corners of the poster) Josh Brolin; it's the same line!

And it's not even the ego, it's the full humility. I just go, "When did this happen? Why have I been lucky enough to suddenly be working with these wonderful people?"

Do you feel professionally and personally satisfied?

Brolin: Gratified, yes. Satisfied, no.

Each experience is really wonderful, working with Jason (Reitman), which was very specific, and then going and working with Paul Thomas Anderson, which was very different and absolute chaos on the set every day.

And you go and work with Robert Rodriguez (on Sin City) and everything you're doing you're in a room like this for a month and a half, and it's completely green and the only real thing in the room is a table and everything he'll put in later in (post-production).

How do you feel about yourself as an actor compared to who you were back then?

Brolin: I'm more relaxed, more emotional now. I'm always nervous, I'm always insecure, I get nervous in front of a camera, I still shake a lot, I still have to pull my legs as straight as they can go because my knees are going like that (wobbling).

It's a vulnerable act but I like it because I'm constantly confronting it.

And Kate (Winslet) will tell you the same thing. Every movie that we start, even when we started this one (Labor Day), feels like the first movie you've ever done.

You start to find it, you start to feel the chemistry with somebody, then you go "I know what this is", and then Jason (Reitman) starts to do his little tweaking.

You've said that you're usually more drawn to extreme characters. Why is that?

Brolin: I don't know. It's just more interesting to me. They're more sustainable.

When I was younger, they tried to pigeonhole me. They saw however I look cosmetically, and they were like, jock or football guy. I never played football in my life.

My interest was more psychological. My interest when I was in high school was more being a lawyer and criminal law, like "What makes people tick?".

How did you go against being pigeonholed?

Brolin: Again you're in this weird dichotomous place - you want to work and just make money and at the same time you want to be proud of the work.

After a while, I started trading full-time in stocks because before TV got really good - TV is really good now - I was doing TV that I didn't like.

I'd be running to one stage and doing half a scene, then finish the scene that we didn't finish the other day, so that you can get it on the air in eight days.

Then I remember thinking, 'I'd rather trade stocks' or do something else professionally than do this and I stopped. And then TV got really good.

I traded for two and half years and I did very well.

Then (Planet Terror) and No Country For Old Men happened and I was able to selfishly do what I wanted to do which was to do films which were very condensed - three months of prep and three months of actually doing it and then you're out.

Get The New Paper for more stories.