Josh Brolin Says ‘No Country For Old Men’ Was Originally Heath Ledger’s Part, But He Needed A Break From Acting

“No Country For Old Men” is easily one of the better modern western thrillers made in the last twenty years and it’s sort of shocking to realize that actor Josh Brolin, who played the morally questionable protagonist of the film, almost didn’t join The Coen Brothers film. How Brolin ended up being cast in the film is a pretty fascinating story as he got help from two genre directors for his audition tape but even that wasn’t enough.

“Well I did my first audition—Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino filmed my first audition on a $1 million Genesis camera during lunch during ‘Grindhouse‘ and so that was a really cool looking audition, but I didn’t get the part. It was turned down,” Brolin told Collider of the audition process for the role, back in the day.

Ultimately, his agent helped secure a meeting with the Coens and helped Brolin land the part in the end, however, there is more to that casting story.

READ MORE: Josh Brolin Talks Turning Down ‘Jurassic World,’ & An Alejandro González Iñárritu Film

While speaking with Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast promoting his new series, “The Outer Range” (listen below), Brolin told the story in intimate entertaining detail. It’s definitely worth a listen. But there’s more and he detailed even more hiccups after landing the gig as a disastrous motorcycle accident almost jeopardized his involvement.

“Two days later, I was riding my motorcycle, I tee-boned a car, and I was flying in the air thinking, ‘Holy shit, I really wanted to work with the Coen Brothers.'” Brolin snapped his collar bone and the film started two weeks later, but he gets shot in the movie in the right arm so his injury worked for the role.

Meanwhile, during the telling of the tale, Brolin confirmed a long-rumored detail: Aussie actor Heath Ledger was the Coens’ first choice and was supposed to be the star of the movie. “I know they were really frustrated and they were looking everywhere,” Brolin said. “I don’t know if you knew this, but Heath Ledger was supposed to do that role. It wasn’t that he died, he pulled out of the role. He was like, ‘I don’t want to work right now.'”

Ledger at the time had his daughter and famously also dropped out of the most coveted role in Hollywood: the lead role in Terrence Malick‘s “The Tree Of Life” which eventually went to Brad Pitt. So, Brolin was certainly luckily on multiple fronts during the casting process, and coming away with his life is likely one of the best outcomes of all of this.

It’s a super engaging conversation and you should listen to the entire thing below.