Josh Brolin has starred in many movies over his career including The Avengers and The Goonies. But as a child, he grew up on a ranch with a lot of animals. In fact, the actor said he once watched a man get mauled by a lion.
It's all thanks to his mother. She kept all kinds of animals on his family's ranch including "big cats, wolves, bears."
"My mother had zero filter, so as crazy as she was, and she was absolutely f—-ing nuts," he said on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast. "She was a way station for all animals that had been illegally taken out of the wild, and they tried to domesticate them. She'd find those people, have them jailed, nurse them back to health and either rerelease them or find the most habitable zoo."
In particular, he remembered the one time his mother suggested a ranch hand, Bud Applehand, feed a lion by hand. The animal wasn't eating properly, so she suggested he get up close and personal.
Brolin explained, "'Look, he's not eating. You have to go in there and show him how to eat. You have to sit next to him and show him. Put your face in the bowl and show him how to. He needs help.'"
The worker didn't want to get close to the animal.
"Bud goes, 'You just want me to get in the thing and just sit down?' I mean, he didn't know any better, poor guy. And so he goes in there, and she goes, 'Well, sit next to him,'" Brolin recalled.
"'Now, put the bowl up to your face and then just lower your head like you're eating.' So, he's like, this is a tough, tough dude, country guy," he added.
Josh Brolin Says Lion Attacked Man
Brolin said the lion then opened its mouth and began to slowly sink its teeth into the man's thigh. Brolin said, "You hear the rip of the jeans and you hear ... Bud's going, 'His teeth are going into my leg. His teeth are going into my leg.'"
He said his mother had a condition where if she got nervous, she would laugh hysterically.
Brolin said, "So, you hear, 'The teeth are going into my leg, the teeth are going into my leg,' and she's trying to talk, but she can't because there's just wheezing with this laugh."
He said his mother tried to shout, "Don't move," but the lion "just kept its teeth in there for a while." Finally, the lion released the worker, who shouted, "Get me the f—- outta here."
