Yahoo Lifestyle Josh Brolin Shares Serious Repeat Health Diagnosis After 17 Years
Josh Brolin recently opened up about a serious health concern that he faced twice in his life, albeit nearly two decades apart.
The health issue came up when the 56-year-old actor participated in a conversation for Rob Lowe’s podcast, Literally! With Rob Lowe. The episode, which the two actors recorded live in front of an audience at a bookstore in Montecito, Calif., was released on Thursday, Jan. 30.
While discussing From Under the Truck, his new memoir that was released in November 2024, Brolin detailed some of the difficult times he endured as a child and in his young adult life while living in Montecito, where he and Lowe are both based. Brolin recently returned to live in the Central California community, which he explained was a tough move for him to make.
As the No Country for Old Men actor revealed, the anxiety that surfaced as he considered moving back to his hometown is what he believes caused a major health issue.
“I got so stressed out about moving here—because it represented something very specific to me—that I ended up contracting a mild case of Bell’s palsy,” Brolin said.
“From the stress?” Lowe clarified.
“Absolutely, 100 percent,” Brolin said. “There’s nothing else to blame it on.”
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines Bell’s palsy as “a neurological disorder that causes paralysis or weakness on one side of the face.” The condition “occurs when one of the nerves that controls muscles in the face becomes injured or stops working properly,” according to the institute.
As the True Grit star went on to explain, he had one prior experience with the condition. The first time he experienced it was “17 years ago when I was thinking about moving back up here,” he recalled. “So the two times I’ve gotten Bell’s palsy are when I was thinking about moving up here. Then I moved up here, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s all good.’”
In Brolin’s case, the stress that he experienced ultimately lifted as new positive memories began outweighing the bad memories from his youth.
“Writers and storytellers, you make everything just more dramatic and more severe,” he said. “And not that it wasn’t, because I think it was. But all the other stuff kind of came, too. And it’s been really, really nice.”
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