Mark Ruffalo
Mark Alan Ruffalo is an American actor and filmmaker who began his career in the late 1980s and first gained recognition for his work in Kenneth Lonergan's play This Is Our Youth and drama film You Can Count on Me. He went on to star in the romantic comedies 13 Going on 30 and Just like Heaven, and the thrillers In the Cut, Zodiac, and Shutter Island. He received a Tony Award nomination for his supporting role in the Broadway revival of Awake and Sing! in 2006. Ruffalo has gained international recognition for playing Bruce Banner / Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with the film The Avengers.
Ruffalo earned a record-tying four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a sperm donor in The Kids Are All Right, Dave Schultz in Foxcatcher, Michael Rezendes in Spotlight, and a debauched lawyer in Poor Things. He won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for playing a gay activist in the television drama film The Normal Heart, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor for his dual role as identical twins in the miniseries I Know This Much Is True.
Early life
Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His mother, Marie Rose, is a hairdresser and stylist, while his father, Frank Lawrence Ruffalo Jr., worked as a construction painter. He has two sisters, Tanya Marie, who died in 2023, and Nicole, and a brother, Scott, who died in 2008. His father is of Italian descent, from Girifalco, Calabria, and his mother is of French Canadian and Italian ancestry. His father was a Baháʼí, while his mother was Christian. "I grew up in a household that had three religions in it, Christianity, Catholicism and Bahai'ism, so there were different viewpoints and a lot of debate about that, and I immediately began to understand that all these people that I loved very much had very strong feelings about faith, but all of them were valid to me. I felt that none of them, my grandmother, my father or my mother, was better or worse than the other."Ruffalo attended both Catholic and progressive schools throughout his education. Ruffalo has described himself as having been a "happy kid", although he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD as a child and a young adult. Ruffalo spent his teen years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where his father worked. He competed in wrestling in junior high and high school in Wisconsin and Virginia. Ruffalo graduated from First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach in 1986, where he acted for the Patriot Playhouse. He moved with his family to San Diego, California, and later to Los Angeles, where he took classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory and co-founded the Orpheus Theatre Company. With the theater company, he wrote, directed, and starred in a number of plays. He also spent close to a decade working as a bartender.
Career
1989–2002: Early film roles and theatre
Ruffalo made his screen debut in an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse, followed by minor film roles. Ruffalo played Vinnie Webber, a minor character in Series 1 Episode 9 of Due South, first broadcast in Canada in 1994. During this time he made his film debut in the horror film Mirror, Mirror II: Raven Dance followed by Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur. He starred as Warren Straub in the original cast of the Kenneth Lonergan play This Is Our Youth off-Broadway. Lonergan was a founding member of Naked Angels, a theater company that Ruffalo also belonged to. Ruffalo acted opposite Josh Hamilton and Missy Yager.Ruffalo had minor roles in films including The Dentist, the low-key crime comedy Safe Men, and Ang Lee's Civil War western Ride with the Devil. He reunited with Kenneth Lonergan acting in his film You Can Count on Me. Ruffalo portrayed Laura Linney's character's brother. The film received critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations. He received favorable reviews for his performance in this film, often earning comparisons to the young Marlon Brando, and won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Montreal World Film Festival. His next role was in 2001 in Rod Lurie's The Last Castle playing a bookie in a military prison alongside Robert Redford. It led to other supporting roles, including the films XX/XY, Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me, John Woo's Windtalkers, Jane Campion's In the Cut, and We Don't Live Here Anymore. Ruffalo later described his in role in The Last Castle as "seminal to me".
2003–2005: Romantic comedies
In the mid-2000s, Ruffalo appeared as a romantic lead in numerous romantic comedies starting with View from the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow. He then starred opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 which has since become a cult classic. That same year, he also acted in Michel Gondry's romantic fantasy drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starring Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. In the film Ruffalo plays a supporting role as Stan who is a technician in charge of erasing people's memories of each other. That same year, he acted opposite Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise as a narcotics detective in Michael Mann's crime thriller Collateral. Todd McCarthy of Variety praised Ruffalo writing, " provides an extra dimension of intelligence to what initially looks like a stock cop role." He starred in Just Like Heaven with Reese Witherspoon which was adapted from the French novel by Marc Levy entitled If Only It Were True. That same year, he acted in the Rob Reiner romantic comedy Rumor Has It starring Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, and Shirley MacLaine.2006–2011: Expansion into Broadway, direction, and dramatic roles
In 2006, Ruffalo starred in the political drama remake All the King's Men acting opposite Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Anthony Hopkins. The film was adapted by Steven Zaillian based on the Robert Penn Warren 1946 novel of the same name. Also in 2006, he made his Broadway debut starring as Moe Axelrod in Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! at the Belasco Theatre in New York. Ruffalo acted alongside Lauren Ambrose, Pablo Schreiber, and Zoe Wanamaker. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wrote of his performance, "Nobody slings it with more panache than Mark Ruffalo, the soulful movie and stage actor making his Broadway debut here." David Rooney of Variety wrote: "The most arresting work onstage comes from Ruffalo, channeling prickly charm into a proud man who uses glib aggression to camouflage his frustration. Ruffalo's scenes with Ambrose are the drama's most electric moments." The role earned him a nomination for Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.In March 2007, Ruffalo appeared in David Fincher's crime thriller Zodiac as SFPD homicide inspector Dave Toschi, who ran the investigation to find and apprehend the Zodiac killer from 1969 through most of the 1970s. He acted opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. Critic Roger Ebert described Ruffalo's performance by writing that "Ruffalo plays him not as a hotshot but as a dogged officer who does things by the book because he believes in the book". Toschi was role model for the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. That same year, Ruffalo played divorced lawyer Dwight Arno, who accidentally kills a child and speeds away, in Terry George's film Reservation Road, based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz.
File:Mark-Ruffallo-the-kids-are-allright-27-10-10-Berlin-2.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Ruffalo at the premiere of The Kids Are All Right in Berlin
In 2008, Ruffalo starred as a con man in The Brothers Bloom with Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz and co-starred with Julianne Moore in Blindness. 2008 also saw Ruffalo in Brian Goodman's What Doesn't Kill You with Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peet, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2009, he played a brief role in the film Where the Wild Things Are as Max's mother's boyfriend. Ruffalo directed a number of plays during his time at the Orpheus Theatre Company, and made his feature film directorial debut with 2010 indie film Sympathy for Delicious starring himself, Juliette Lewis, and Laura Linney, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. In March 2010, Ruffalo signed with the Creative Artists Agency ; in June 2010, he signed on with the United Talent Agency.
In 2010, Ruffalo co-starred in the Martin Scorsese thriller Shutter Island as U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule, the partner of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Teddy Daniels. Also in 2010, he starred in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right, with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. Ruffalo stated in an interview that he approached Cholodenko after watching High Art and said he would love to work with her. Years later, she called Ruffalo and said she wrote a script and had him in mind for the part. Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter praised all three leads for their chemistry and performances writing, "Moore, Bening and Ruffalo all deliver endearingly quirky comic performances". His role earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
2012–2019: ''Marvel'' films
Ruffalo starred in The Avengers, the sixth installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, replacing Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner/The Hulk. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised Ruffalo's work writing, "Ruffalo actually makes Bruce and Hulk interesting, even droll characters, superior to the Eric Bana and Edward Norton incarnations, and his version ingeniously locates the big green monster's secret not in the over-rehearsed subject of 'anger management' but depression and self-hate." He reprised the role again in Iron Man 3, and in Avengers: Age of Ultron.In 2013, Ruffalo starred in the romantic comedy Begin Again acting alongside Keira Knightley. The film received positive reviews and was a financial success. The following year, Ruffalo starred as Ned Weeks in the HBO television adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-era play, The Normal Heart, his performance earned him an Emmy nomination. He says he has had an outpouring of support for his performance:
Also in 2014, Ruffalo received his second Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of wrestler Dave Schultz in the biographical drama Foxcatcher directed by Bennett Miller. Ruffalo co-starred alongside Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Vanessa Redgrave. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote of their performances, "Tatum and Ruffalo, as Mark and Dave, have outdone themselves. These actors give what seems to me the most compelling portrayal of brothers since Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in Scorsese's Raging Bull."
In 2015, Ruffalo starred as a father of two with bipolar disorder in the independent comedy film Infinitely Polar Bear, for which he earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination. Also in 2015, he portrayed journalist Michael Rezendes in the drama film Spotlight, for which he earned his third Academy Award nomination and a BAFTA Award nomination. Ruffalo acted opposite Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, and Liev Schreiber. Ruffalo told The Hollywood Reporter that he met with Rezendes and studied him as research for the film saying, "I spent a lot of time with the real journalist, I had meals with him. I talked with him for hours. I sat next to him at work, I watched him work the phones. I watched him write his stories. I talked to him about his life and his family. I had him give me tours of Boston. As much as I could soak him up seemed to be the most important part."
Ruffalo portrayed Agent Dylan Rhodes in Now You See Me 2 and executive produced the romantic drama Anything. He returned to Broadway in the revival of the Arthur Miller play The Price at the American Airlines Theatre. Ruffalo acted opposite Danny DeVito and Tony Shalhoub. Marilyn Stasio of Variety wrote, "Ruffalo and DeVito clearly get a kick out of the buying and selling rituals of Victor and Solomon. There is warmth in their tones and mutual respect in their exchange of confidences". In 2019, he starred as Robert Bilott in the Todd Haynes directed legal thriller Dark Waters which he also produced. The film co-starred Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Pullman, and Victor Garber. During this time he reprised his role of Bruce Banner in Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, and Avengers: Endgame. He has been noted for spoiling the endings of Avengers: Infinity War a year ahead of theatrical release, as well as Avengers: Endgame a few weeks ahead of release.