Career

Acting

Ruffalo had minor roles in films like The Dentist (1996), the low-key crime comedy Safe Men (1998) and Ang Lee's Civil War Western Ride with the Devil (1999). Through a chance meeting with writer Kenneth Lonergan, he began collaborating with Lonergan and appeared in several of his plays, including the original cast of This is Our Youth (1996), which led to Ruffalo's role as Laura Linney's character's brother in Lonergan's Academy Award-nominated 2000 film You Can Count On Me.[2] 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.[2]

This led to other significant roles, including the films XX/XY (2002), Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me (2003), Jane Campion's In the Cut (2003), Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), which is based on two short stories written by Andre Dubus.[2] He appeared opposite Tom Cruise as a narcotics detective in Michael Mann's crime thriller Collateral (2004).[2]

In the mid-2000s, Ruffalo appeared as a romantic lead in View From the Top (2002), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Just Like Heaven (2005) and Rumor Has It (2005).[2] In 2006, Ruffalo starred in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! at the Belasco Theatre in New York, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.[2] In March 2007, he appeared in 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.[2] In 2007, 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.[citation needed]

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. In 2010, he co-starred in the Martin Scorsese thriller Shutter Island as U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule, the partner of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Teddy Daniels.[10]

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. His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.[11]

Ruffalo starred in The Avengers (2012), the sixth installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, replacing Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner / Hulk.[12] Ruffalo received critical acclaim for his performance and is under contract to reprise the role in any future film appearances of the character produced by Marvel Studios.[12] Ruffalo also made a cameo appearance as Banner in Iron Man 3, making him the first actor to reprise the character in a live-action film. He reprised the role again in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017),[13] and Avengers: Infinity War (2018), as well as its untitled sequel, set for release in 2019.

In 2014, Ruffalo starred as Ned Weeks in a 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:

I've never had so sincere and vulnerable a response from people for anything that I've ever done.... And of everything that I've done since I've been on social media, which hasn't been that long, by the way, I haven't had such an overwhelmingly positive response as I have from The Normal Heart directly to me. And it's a blessing, man. If this is it, if I have a piano dropped on me tomorrow, then I would go down thinking, "You know what, I did okay as far as my career goes, because that's a gift. That's rare."[14]

Also in 2014, Ruffalo received his second Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of wrestler Dave Schultz in the biographical drama Foxcatcher. The next year in 2015, he starred as a bipolar father-of-two in the independent comedy film Infinitely Polar Bear, for which he earned a Golden Globe Award nomination, and he also appeared as journalist Michael Rezendes in the drama film Spotlight, for which he earned his third Academy Award nomination and a BAFTA Award nomination.

Theatre

Directing

He directed a number of plays during his time at the Orpheus Theatre Company, and made his feature film directorial debut with Sympathy for Delicious, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. On releasing the film, Ruffalo said, "I'm still looking for distribution. I have a couple offers on the table, but I'm holding out for something a little bigger. I've been screening it for a lot of groups, and people are really responding to it. I think they're scared of that movie."[15]

Political activism

Ruffalo is pro-choice. He has explained his opinion by saying: "I don't want to turn back the hands of time to when women shuttled across state lines in the thick of night to resolve an unwanted pregnancy, in a cheap hotel room."[16]

He has stated support for LGBTQ+ rights,[17] however he has received some criticism from the transgender community for supporting the casting of a man, Matt Bomer, to play a transgender woman in the film Anything, of which Ruffalo was an executive producer.[18]

In 2008, Ruffalo expressed concern that gas companies were eyeing his family's land in Callicoon, New York. After doing his own investigation, New York magazine wrote, he becomes "anti-fracking's first famous face."[19] On October 4, 2010, Ruffalo appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss hydraulic fracturing and the FRAC Act of 2009.[20] He claimed in the December 2010 issue of GQ magazine that after he organized screenings in Pennsylvania of a documentary about natural-gas-drilling called Gasland, he was placed on a terror advisory list.[21] The Department of Homeland Security denied the claim.[22]

Ruffalo has given interviews to We Are Change, a 9/11 'truth' group, in both 2007 and 2011.[23] Ruffalo stated: "I'm baffled by the way all three buildings came down. My first reaction was that buildings don't fall down like that.[24]

The Solutions Project is an organization founded by engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson (Stanford University), Marco Krapels, documentary filmmaker/activist Josh Fox and Mark Ruffalo, with the aim of moving the United States towards 100% renewable energy, including the use of wind power and solar power.[25] The organization says this energy transition is mainly social and political in nature, not technical.[26]

In 2014, Ruffalo spoke out against Israel's Operation Protective Edge, Israel's 7-week war against Hamas, tweeting:[27] "Israel destroys el-Wafa hospital as staff evacuates all patients". After receiving criticism, Ruffalo responded: "Sorry, I thought blowing up Hospitals was something that all human beings could agree was off limits." Finally, in response to accusations of anti-Semitism, Ruffalo responded,[28] citing a Tikkun Daily article: "Empathizing w/ Gaza does NOT make me anti-Semitic, nor pro-Hamas or anti-Israel. It makes me human."

In 2016, Ruffalo narrated and produced Dear President Obama: The Clean Energy Revolution Is Now, a documentary by director Jon Bowermaster which looks at President Obama's environmental tenure and legacy concerning the massive expansion of oil and natural gas drilling.[29] In the 2016 election, Ruffalo supported democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.[30] Ruffalo actively supported the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline project.[31]

Ruffalo has suggested that the Zika virus is the inadvertent creation of a British biotech company that has been releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to combat dengue fever in Brazil.[32]

Ruffalo caused controversy in June 2017 after posting a petition on Twitter urging NBC to stop hiring white conservative commentators.[33][34]

In June 2017, Ruffalo endorsed Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 UK general election. He tweeted: "Because @jeremycorbyn offers people an alternative to the Corporate status quo, which never ends well for them, I humbly endorse Corbyn."[35][36]

Personal life

Since June 2000, Ruffalo has been married to Sunrise Coigney and they have three children: son Keen (b. 2001), and daughters Bella Noche (b. 2005) and Odette (b. 2007).

After completing work on the film The Last Castle, Ruffalo was diagnosed with a vestibular schwannoma, a type of brain tumor also known as an acoustic neuroma, and had surgery; the tumor was benign but resulted in a period of partial facial paralysis.[37] He recovered from the paralysis; however, he became deaf in his left ear as a result of the tumor.[38]

On December 1, 2008, Ruffalo's brother, Scott, was shot in the head[39] at his Beverly Hills condominium,[40] and died a week later.[41] The case remains unsolved.[42]

Ruffalo and his family primarily live in Manhattan.[43] Ruffalo also owns a house in Sullivan County, New York and in 2016 described the Catskill Mountains as his home.[44]

Filmography and awards

Audiobooks

• 2016: Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (together with Bernie Sanders, the author), Macmillan Audio, ISBN 978-1427285331