Josh Brolin has been an actor in Hollywood since 1985 but his career really started to take shape in the late 2000s when the actor took on more villainous roles, like American Gangster, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and No Country for Old Men. Brolin was also a key player in Phase 1 of the MCU where he portrayed the villain Thanos across multiple films in the cinematic universe before playing starring roles in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
No doubt, the actor leads a busy life juggling a lucrative career in film as well as a family life at home. Brolin is happily married to Kathryn Boyd, the Deadpool 2 star’s former assistant (who is also a business owner). The couple also share a one-year-old daughter together, Westlyn Reign Brolin. The current state of his romantic life is the light at the end of a dark and twisting tunnel that was his second marriage to ex-wife fellow actress Diane Lane.
Brolin and Lane were married for nearly a decade, from August 2004 to 2013. According to reports, the marriage endured some pretty troubling times. Of the trying moments in their marriage, one incident in particular made headlines. In 2004, four months after they married, Lane called the cops to her and Brolin’s home following an altercation. Brolin was arrested for domestic battery. The couple would eventually call the incident a misunderstanding and Lane declined to press charges following those events.
Brolin has been very public about taking ownership of his shortcomings in his marriage to Lane. In addition to his domestic violence-related arrest, Brolin would be arrested two more times over the course of their marriage, once for an altercation and once for being publicly intoxicated. The year 2013 proved to be a struggle for Brolin and he later explained:
“Well, it was another turning point. It made me think of a lot of things. My mom dying when I was in my 20s. All the impact that had on me that I hadn’t moved past; I was always such a momma’s boy. But I realized that I was on a destructive path. I knew that I had to change and mature.”
During an interview with ET, he admitted that he and Lane had some great moments together but unfortunately the highs didn’t outweigh the lows. Brolin blamed not being personally ready for the heavy commitment of marriage as a major reason for the downward spiral they took.
“I loved Diane…I loved being a father figure to her daughter,” he said. “It just wasn’t attainable, and in that hero mentality, you get exhausted, and then when you get exhausted, you get resentful, and then all that stuff comes out. So I feel bad that I didn’t have the presence of mind or the maturity or whatever to understand that early on.”
Brolin explained that his desire to play “hero” was a disadvantage in his previous relationships, including with Lane. He grew resentful of the fact that he couldn’t be everything for his then-wife. His identity, his power, and his security relied heavily on the idea of being needed by his partner. Instead of looking for his wife to be his equal, he was looking for someone to be co-dependent so that he could in turn feel useful. Ultimately, his toxic way of thinking was one of the reasons for the demise of past relationships, including his marriage to Lane.
