Mark Ruffalo spent his twenties drifting through what he estimates as 600 failed auditions, and later quit Hollywood twice but these days, he seems to have it all figured out. Especially since he was belted by gamma rays. As an actor, you can do everything, says Ruffalo, 48, whos following Avengers: Age of Ultron with a role as a bipolar dad in the indie drama Infinitely Polar Bear, opening in theaters today. I grew up in the theater, and you could do a musical, a comedy, a tragedy. Those kind of boundaries dont really exist and so I put on the Hulk mask for a little while, or I put on the Begin Again mask for a little while.
Hanging out in a West Village coffee house and in Central Park in his interview for our Hulk cover story, Ruffalo had plenty to say: Heres more from the conversation.
Playing the Hulk changed everything
Im like a Depression-era person, as far as acting goes, he says. Its sort of like, grab it while you can and make the most of whats in front of you. The first Avengers opened up a host of things that Ive been struggling to get made for a long period of time. It created this whole, sort of, avalanche of work. And then I was kinda like, You know what, youre 45, this is the pocket, now. So I was also like, I want to really get a nice body of work out there to really open up the margins of how Im perceived, you know?
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He may take up semi-permanent residence in the Marvel Universe
I have six movies all together. And were going to be doing the third and fourth Avengers at the same time. And so you know, conceivably, if Im still alive, and they dont mind a grey-haired Hulk, I could be in this universe for another 10 or 15 years. Its like television show where you do one episode every two years and get paid well, and have economic reliability in whats otherwise a completely chaotic market. So, as long as theyre happy, I see this being a really nice thing.
In the wake of last years The Normal Heart, hes anxious to do more TV
I want to get into some television. There might be a perception about me being only a movie actor, you know, and theres this whole new sort of frontier opening up in that medium.
After successfully helping lead a movement to ban fracking in New York, hes been approached to run for office and though he doesnt want to, hes given it a lot of thought
My heart almost immediately says no. And then, I say, well why is that? I analyze it. I dont know. Who knows what the futures going to hold. I also think that we need people who hold office as a way of being of service, not as a career. I keep telling the progressive community, who are mostly people working behind the scenes, You know guys, youve got to run. But a lot of them dont want to run because they know its kind of a stacked game. And Im like, well then you know, nothings really gonna change. So, who cares if you smoke pot. Who cares if you experimented with hallucinogens, who cares if you had a bad breakup. You know, these are the people that we need leading us. You know? We need real people whove had real lives.
He wishes Elizabeth Warren would run for president, and believes she could win
It would be very healthy, I think, for the whole Democratic party. It would be healthy for the nation. Because she has populist ideas that are resonating with people now. When you see the focus groups on her, she is scoring deep into Republicans and Independents, you know? When working class people, and the working poor and the middle class, hear what she has to say, its pretty non-confrontational and also well within their needs at this moment in time. Like student loans were, like, raping these kids. They are going out into the world with all this debt that is crippling to them. And we are using this as an income source for the state. I dont care what your political beliefs are you dont want your kid to start in the world that way.
He doesnt try to stay in character between scenes, but sometimes he cant help it
I dont see it, but my wife knows it, she says: OK, youre totally different, the way you walk, the way you talk. Sometimes the way you relate to people changes when youre in a role. Youre bringing those attributes onto yourself and then you spend the next three months more in that persons life than in your own. Its the law of interaction, where whatever you come into contact with, you take something away from that thing that changes you. I dont torture myself, but Ill steep myself in, lets say, Normal Heart. Theres an outrage in there thats easily accessible to anyone who has a heart beating in their chest and a mind in their head. So I can access my own outrage, and I can put that into that. Im not gay, so I dont understand that, per se, but I understand what discrimination is, from this moment or that moment: Youre Italian, youre an actor, youre a Democrat, youre a liberal.
He got way too excited after winning his first role, in a 1989 Clearasil commercial
I was 19, maybe 20, that was my first paying job. I went and quit my day job, stringing guitars at a guitar store on Sunset Boulevard, Freedom Guitar. I made like $30,000 and I was like, Ive made it, Im rich, Im quitting my job, Im on my way! Two months later, after lending money and treating friends to dinner, and buying a new car stereo system, it was all gone. And then it was back to whatever small jobs I could get. Busboy, waiting tables, gardening, house painting, moving, whatever shit I did everything when I was in LA.
He felt out of place in Nineties Los Angeles
I didnt really fit in. I was anachronistic within my age group. Cause I was studying with Stella Adler, and I was working on Inge and Ibsen and Chekhov, and they were doing Whos The Boss episodes. My funny joke was, I finally came to New York, to do This is Our Youth, and I walked into the city, and I went, holy shit Im a swan! What the fuck was I doing in L.A.? Of course I didnt work [there]. Cause I was the ugly duckling in L.A!
Meditation saved him from anxiety
Thats who the Hulk is afraid of the meditation teacher! I was sort of feeling anxious all the time, and was starting to get really desperate. And so I had a friend who had been a longtime drug addict. He did the program, and we hooked up again after a couple years this was around the time when I was thinking, I gotta find something, because this is getting unbearable, my brain wont shut off even when I try to sleep. He had been the angriest man in the world, and [now] he had such a calm demeanor. I had never seen a human being change that much. And hes like, Ive been meditating. Anyway, that led me to this meditation teacher and, God, its been, like seven years. Its pretty much a daily practice that quiets your brain and oddly enough, actually slows down time, so youre not so much trapped in your immediate reactions to things. And everything changed. My work started to change, my luck started to change. The way the world looked to me changed. Like, with all the crazy shit going on in the world, I actually have an enormous amount of hope.
While he was making Foxcatcher, Ruffalo a former high school wrestler briefly convinced himself that he could actually return to the sport.
I had this little fantasy that maybe Ill do the seniors grand tournament. And Ill show people that you can be a 47-year-old man doing it and that wrestlings really accessible to people. And I had one day where first I got schooled by Channing Tatum on the mat and then I got schooled by an NCAA coach. And I just literally had to leave the room: What did you think you were? Youll never be a wrestler!'
He had fun at Comic-Con where he wore a familiar disguise.
Its mindblowing. I was walking around there with a Hulk mask on, just to see what its like in there. Its this whole subculture thats kind of sweet actually this outside culture that finally had its due. I mean, how cool is it? They get dressed up. Theyre not like, shootin dope or smoking crack. Maybe they smoke a little pot, but that doesnt hurt anybody really, does it? They could be doing a lot worse things. And you know what, the values of the superheroes are actually pretty damn good, when you think about it. Fighting for the little guy, fighting world domination.
His son takes him to a local comic book store to catch up on the Hulks adventures.
My son has become an aficionado. We are always at Forbidden Planet buying the next Avengers installment or the Hulk. A lot of people talk about Planet Hulk, so I wanted to know what that was about. And World War Hulk. A lot of the newer Hulk iterations are really interesting and complex, who the Hulk is in the whole Marvel universe over certain periods of time. Some moments hes against them, [then] hes with them and now hes the ultimate foe in World War Hulk and Planet Hulk. I know its funny for me to be talking about this stuff its funny to my own ears, too.
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