SUMMER STARS

It happens every year. Certain summer films give certain actors a chance to bloom. But what happens once the warm weather ends? We checked in on a decade’s worth of summer stars to see what’s happened since.

1985: JOSH BROLIN IN ‘THE GOONIES’

Like Ke Huy Quan, Josh Brolin also made his professional acting debut in a Steven Spielberg-produced film.

Brolin, 18, recalls the auditions he survived to play Brand Walsh in “The Goonies”: “In the interview before the readings (and I did four of those before I got the part) I went to Amblin (Entertainment) and everybody was there, the producers, Dick (Donner, who directed) and Steven Spielberg. Now I love Steven’s films and all that, but I didn’t know what he looked like, so I had no idea he was there the whole time. Later I asked where Spielberg was and they told me he was there and liked me very much!”

Though his father is actor James Brolin (which accounts for the younger Brolin’s good looks), Josh grew up away from Hollywood. Home was the family farm in Paso Robles. “I used to get up at 5:30 a.m., load the truck with bales of hay and feed 58 horses when I was 8. I’d mow acres of grass for a dollar a week.”

High school plays and some “off-off-Broadway” paved his way to “The Goonies” audition. The film, in turn, brought the lead role in “Thrashin’,” a skateboard saga that, said Brolin, is “ ‘West Side Story’ without the music and dancing.” It’s due in later this summer.

Brolin has since completed film No. 3, “Prison of Children,” in which he plays “a sensitive bad guy”--a gay right-hand man to the main villain.