JOSH BROLIN - 'LIFE IS A GIFT'

IN A NEW MEMOIR THE ACTOR BREAKS DOWN HIS JOURNEY FROM SURF PUNK BRAWLER TO SOBER, REFLECTIVE HUSBAND AND FATHER OF FOUR

- JULIE JORDAN

Josh Brolin knows he's being tested. While he has two adult children, son Trevor and daughter Eden, with ex-wife Alice Adair, the actor is once again in the midst of hands-on parenting. His two youngest kids, daughters Westlyn, 6, and Chapel, 3, whom he shares with his wife of eight years, Kathryn, "are tough right now," he admits. Their most recent sticking point? Cleaning up after meals. "I'm like, 'Can you please take your dish to the sink?' And I got looked right in the eye, 'What if I don't?"" recalls Brolin, 56, laughing.

"You're 3, man. You can't say that to me. And why are you looking at me right in the pupils like you're going to kick my ass?" Instead of a heated response, Brolin gave himself a few moments to regroup, realizing the power he holds as a father.

"Kids look up to you like a god, and they think if they can break you, that means they're not safe," he says.

"I went outside, and I got super teary. Then I was like, 'It's okay to feel this way. Onward."" Seventeen years after the film No Country for Old Men made him a bona fide movie star, Brolin is turning self-reflection into an art form. His new memoir From Under the Truck looks back on his remarkable transformation-from a brawler fueled by drugs and alcohol to a doting father and husband now 11 years sober. Written but in a unique lyrical, often poetic style (inspired by his own journal entries), "the book is in reaction to a very colorful, albeit crazy, mother, who could be a lot of fun, and a father who was very introverted," says the son of actor James Brolin, 84, and wildlife activist Jane, who died in 1995.