Josh Brolin's Dad Once Killed His Pet and Served It for Dinner

Josh Brolin had a bit of an unconventional upbringing, having grown up on a ranch in Paso Robles, CA. So naturally, he's got plenty of stories about his childhood, such as one he recalled in which his father slaughtered his pet pig and then, unbeknownst to him, served it to the family for dinner.

The 56-year-old opened up about the incident during a recent appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, when host Graham Bensinger—who had previously spoken to Brolin's father, James Brolin—brought up the time he had announced to his family at the dinner table that he was having the "best ribs" he had ever had.

"Did he tell you the pig story?" Brolin said incredulously, before unleashing a series of bleeped-out expletives.

"This story of me raising pigs is a horrible story, man," he said, recalling that his pigs were named Oink and Snort. "I helped raise these pigs and then we're eating dinner one night, and my dad—it's amazing to me that he would tell you that story, makes him look so bad—he said, 'Guess what you're eating.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Either Oink or Snort.' I was like, 'What?" And then he went, 'Yeah, that's what we're eating. That's who we slaughtered.'"

"I was like, 'Why would you tell a kid that?' It makes no sense," Brolin continued. "Why would you tell your kid that, with any semblance of, like, celebration? Or was he just looking to have an impact?"

"I think he was looking to have an impact," The Goonies star surmised. When pressed further on what that impact might be, Brolin suggested: "Psychologically? On camera? In front of you? I mean, I could get into it."

"Really, like when you feel like you don't have an impact, that's when you start to look for any impact, whether it's a negative impact or not," he extrapolated. "And I think I can break it down to it being that, because I can't imagine saying that to my kid. It doesn't even—it's nowhere in my universe to say that to a kid. Why would you?"

Brolin admitted that he and his father have spoken about the incident, but equated him to a stop light that never changes. "In like, you want to go further with this, do you want to be closer?" he asked. "I find myself to be a fairly open book, in my life, my kids, whatever. And not regurgitating a bunch of sh-t that they don't need to hear."

Suffice to say, it seems like Brolin has taken a different approach to fatherhood. He shares two adult children from his first wife, Alice Adair, including actress Eden Brolin; as well as two young daughters with his current wife, Kathryn Boyd.