Justin Theroux says his primary school was a "Lord of the Flies environment."
The 40-year-old Wanderlust star reveals that his elementary years were not particularly peaceful.
The actor explained he was surrounded by a multitude of unruly boys who were looking for trouble.
"The school was in the centre of our neighbourhood," Justin recalled on American late-night TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live. "It was a very boy-heavy, Lord of the Flies environment. There were a lot of Irish families in the neighbourhood and they all had like 13 kids. There was a lot of competition amongst the boys in general."
Justin was particularly afraid of a band of brothers from the Sullivan family.
He explained that there were too many siblings in the clan to take them on by yourself.
"If you got into a fight with one of these boys, one who's your age, then you would have to rely on your older brother to beat up that boy. The Sullivan boys you could not beat up. There were too many," he said.
When Justin was ten, his father bought him a pair of wooden shoes.
When he wore them to school the Sullivan boys made their feelings on his footwear clear.
"Once I got to school, I bumped into this kid, David Sullivan, and he saw me, and he saw the wooden shoes, and he was like, 'Oh, I will have to punch you now.'" Justin recounted. "It was almost like he felt bad, like, 'I have to hand out a beat down for everyone else. The rules are the rules.' I looked at my brother and he was like, 'You're on your own. I warned you.'"
Justin had to go to severe lengths to protect himself from the force of David Sullivan.
Jennifer Aniston's current beau only saw one way of defending himself.
"[David] brought [me] down to the pavement, [then I] realised I actually only had one means of defending myself, which was the actual wooden shoes themselves," he said. "I took the shoe off, and as hard as I could, I remember clobbering him in the head. His head split, he sort of reared back and he started to cry."
Justin's new film Wanderlust opens on March 2 in UK theatres.