Josh Brolin Explains New Year's Day Arrest Josh Brolin plays a cop in the new movie "Gangster Squad" but, in real life, the actor found himself on the other side of the law, in handcuffs. Brolin, 44, started 2013 off with a New Year's Day arrest on a misdemeanor public intoxication charge. Officers reportedly found Brolin heavily intoxicated on a Santa Monica sidewalk and placed him in a Southern California jail cell for nearly six hours while he sobered up. "New Year's, that's what happened," Brolin said today on "Good Morning America" of his arrest. "I'm the one guy who's out there and they go, "Hey that's Josh. Let's grab him."" The Associated Press reported that Brolin was not given a citation for the arrest and will likely not have to appear in court. Brolin said the incident, which made headlines, was blown out of proportion. It was New Year's. It was a pretty innocent thing. It was a fun thing," he said. The most awful thing about it is you see this shot of me, they don't show you the other shot when I turn and I have a huge smile on my face. Brolin, married to fellow actor Diane Lane, noted the irony of his arrest coming the same month as the release of "Gangster Squad," a true-life movie in which he plays the leader of 1940s Los Angeles police officers who are trying to take down gangster Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn. "They were very sweet to me, actually," Brolin said of the cops who placed him under arrest. Brolin also revealed the true-to-life connection between both his arrest and his new movie in how he, the son of actor James Brolin, became an actor. "I wanted to be a lawyer and then I realized it was the same thing," he said. I started getting into criminal law and what is it working with juries and this and convincing people of that and it is, it's acting. So I've hybrided everything and I'm doing exactly what I want to do. "The odds were worse," he said of acting, "but I wanted to go with this one."