Josh Brolin: Working on Inherent Vice was unnerving

The W star plays police officer Bigfoot Bjornsen in Inherent Vice, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel set in the drug-fuelled Los Angeles of 1970.

The film reunites Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, who starred together in Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, and brings Phoenix back under the directorship of Anderson after his Oscar nominated performance in The Master in 2013.

Josh said Anderson’s directing took him out of his comfort zone but he was delighted when he saw the results.

Speaking on the red carpet in Los Angeles where film was part of the American Film Institute Festival, he said: “When I had space to look back on it, it was always great but it was always kind of unnerving because we never knew what would happen or what the day would bring.

“I said to Paul ‘don’t change dialogue’ because I like to know everything cellularly and then he would change everything.

“You lend yourself to somebody you trust and hope it turns out ok and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it really, really does and sometimes your feeling about it is the only feeling that matters so when I saw this I was very happy I was involved in something so different.”

Josh added that he finds it difficult to explain anything about his character in the film because nothing is what it seems.

I don’t know how to talk about him, he’s a cop and everything he perceives himself to be, he’s not. Everything you may perceive him as turns out to be the opposite.”

Inherent Vice will be released in UK cinemas on January 30, 2015.