Josh Brolin

More than two decades after starting as an actor, Josh Brolin finally got heaps of praise in 2007, thanks to dramatic roles in American Gangster (opposite Denzel Washington) and No Country for Old Men (opposite Javier Bardem). The son of TV star James Brolin (Marcus Welby, M.D.), Josh started in the business in his teens. He played jocks in the movies Goonies (1985, produced by Steven Spielberg) and Thrashin' (1986), then worked steadily in television throughout the early 1990s. He surprised critics with a comedic turn as a gay cop in Flirting with Disaster (1996, starring Ben Stiller), then took small roles in offbeat movies while making money trading stocks. Brolin was all over the place in 2007: he appeared in the Robert Rodriguez-Tarantino Grindhouse project, he nearly stole the show in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, he won a Screen Actors Guild Award with the other stars of the Coen brothers movie No Country for Old Men, and he had a supporting role in the Paul Haggis drama In the Valley of Elah (starring Charlize Theron).

Extra credit: Brolin's stepmother is Barbara Streisand)... Brolin married actress Diane Lane in 2004... He also wrote and directed a short film, X (2008), featuring performances by his daughter Eden Brolin and stepdaughter Eleanor Lambert.