Was Josh Brolin almost killed over a cigarette? (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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In his memoir, From Under the Truck, the Dune and Avengers star, Josh Brolin, revealed a terrifying 2013 encounter – one that left him stabbed in the stomach over something as trivial as a cigarette.
It happened fast. A stranger approached him, asking for money or a smoke. Brolin refused. The next thing he knew, a blade was sinking into his abdomen. But luck, or rather, biology, was on his side. “The umbilical ligament is the densest ligament in the body and it slowed the knife down enough to stop it from hitting any vitals,” he recalled in a People interview (via News 18). The Marvel star barely made it out alive, but his brush with death didn’t stop there.
While waiting for an ambulance, his wife, Kathryn Boyd Brolin, handed him the phone. His instinct? To call his ex-wife, Alice Adair. Brolin recounted her words: ‘I know what to do, but you’ll be fine.’ In his memoir, he detailed how, at that moment, Adair reassured him that she would tell their children what he loved most about them, how much they meant to him, and that they should never spiral into shame because of his past.
That past, as Brolin has admitted, was a wild one. In his teenage years, he ran with a notorious California group called the Cito Rats. They weren’t just troublemakers; they were a mix of wealthy and underprivileged kids who bonded over their shared recklessness. Brolin didn’t just flirt with danger; he lived in it. “I tried heroin. That sounds so horrible when you put it like that. But yeah, I tried heroin. I mean, I never got into it and I never died from it, which is a good thing,” he once said.
Unlike many of his friends, Brolin made it out alive. But the scars, both physical and emotional, stayed. That grim reality shaped his perspective. He once believed in experiencing everything firsthand. Now? Not so much.
Brolin has since turned the page. He built a career packed with unforgettable roles in No Country for Old Men, Sicario, and Deadpool 2. But From Under the Truck promises an unfiltered look at the man behind the tough-guy persona – a survivor who has stared death in the face more than once and lived to tell the tale.
As for that fateful night in Costa Rica, he walked away with more than just a wound. He walked away with a second chance.
