Mark Ruffalo
Mark Ruffalo
Mark Alan Ruffalo is an American actor, director, humanitarian, social activist, and film producer. He made his screen debut in an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse, followed by minor film roles. He was part of the original cast of This Is Our Youth, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Following was his roles in 13 Going on 30, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Zodiac, and What Doesn't Kill You. In 2010, he starred in the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth22 November 1967
CityKenosha, WI
CountryUnited States of America
I've been able to hide behind the character in Eternal Sunshine . People don't recognize me from Collateral . But this feels more exposed.
I have a very dear family and very dear friends. They're my rock. These are people who knew me from the beginning, you know, as a loser in a 1972 Dodge Dart with the bumper literally duct-taped to the body.
With social media, you have this new kind of way to communicate with people that's very immediate, sometimes alarmingly so, sometimes painfully so. If you could just hold some objectivity, a very direct, unfiltered, raw reflection of the way something is landing in the culture without any spin, or filtration, or anything, it's very raw.
It's not my favorite genre, generally, ... But I want to do it. I wanted to try my hand at it, because I was hearing around town, people saying that I couldn't do it. 'Mark Ruffalo can't do comedy. Mark Ruffalo can't be a romantic lead.' And so I was like, 'Those are fighting words, my friend.'
It's a difficult undertaking. I've been married for four years and I see this movie as a cautionary tale about people who've gone deeply out of communication.
They say it was 37 bodies found, but many people think it was twice that count. It's set in the period of the '70s. It centers on my relationship with a loose-cannon reporter. It's also about the five different police forces who came together to find this killer during a time when there were no fax machines, no Internet and it was hard to share information.
I guess the biggest lesson would be to have faith in that little part of yourself that knows what it's doing, knows what it wants, knows what you should be doing, even when all the clamour around you is telling you something else. That's the part that you want to keep alive and that's the part that people want to see when they see you on the screen.
When you're trying to do character work that's different from what people expect from you, you're sort of in territory that is uncharted, and you don't know how it's playing all the time.
I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.
I have a bag full of stuff that I give to people when they come to my house.
The problem to me is violence. It's not cool to kill somebody or hurt people.
People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.
The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them.
I don't know, one out of every two marriages ends up in divorce so there's a lot of great people out there who people aren't happy with.