His mother died in a car accident in 1995 at the age of 55, a loss that cast a long shadow over his adulthood. During the height of his addiction, Brolin believed that 55 was a reasonable age to die—that by then, a person had lived long enough. It was a belief rooted less in logic than exhaustion.
Now 56, he sees that mindset for what it was: a symptom of despair. He acknowledges that it took years to confront his substance abuse honestly and to imagine a future that extended beyond mere survival.