Josh Brolin discusses frostbite, fear and losing body parts as Everest cast recall 'extreme' shooting conditions for Hollywood flick

A lot can go wrong when you're attempting to climb Mount Everest. The world's highest mountain is so tall - 8,848 metres above sea level at its peak - winds near the top can reach 320km/h, and there's always the danger of blizzards and avalanches. Since the first attempt at conquering the mountain in the 1920s, more than 200 people have lost their lives. So why do it?

"A lot of these climbers I talked to, they'd tell me they're on top of Everest, and things are going incredibly wrong, and they go, 'Why do I do this? For what? I'll probably lose my toes, my fingers … or die'. And yet they're doing it again," says Josh Brolin, who stars in Everest, director Baltasar Kormákur's thriller based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

"When you confront your fear that directly, there's something incredibly exhilarating about it."

Brolin plays the cocky Texan Beck Weathers, one of the fortunate climbers who survived - albeit with severe frostbite - a freak storm that took the lives of eight people over two days in May 1996.

"He's a nice guy," says Brolin with a grin. "He flies jets now. He's like, 'Yeah, I'm over the climbing thing'. He has no fingers, no toes, no nose …"

Others weren't quite so lucky. Rob Hall, the New Zealand-born leader of the expedition, died during the incident.