Mark Ruffalo Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Released on 12/03/2019
The great thing about being an actor
is that you're invited into people's worlds
that you normally would never be invited into.
People want to tell their stories.
They want to be seen and they want to be understood.
As an actor you just get to go
on these incredible journeys
that most people are never invited to
or never have the opportunity to travel on.
[upbeat music]
13 Going on 30.
The character I played in 13 Going on 30 is Matt Flamhaff,
who is a pudgy awkward kid who grew up
to be a photographer,,
He fell in love with his childhood sweetheart,
played by Jennifer Garner.
Gary Winnick, rest in peace.
We came up in the kind of indie New York theater
and film scene.
He got this chance to do a big budget film,
and it was 13 Going on 30.
And he's like, Hey man, I want to do this romantic comedy,
but I don't want to do it like all these other things.
I want it to have a message.
He gave me a script, but it wasn't great
and we all worked on it, to try
and make it into something that we felt
would be worthy of our time.
And we shot it, and it came out really, really nice.
I didn't know it was gonna become iconic.
I did know that the the messages in it were real.
You know, we played it all as real as we could.
And I think it's a in a weird way,
a really wholesome movie for for young women and young men.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Michel Gondry was this amazing director
that everyone wanted to work with.
I heard about that he was doing a movie
and I asked for the script,
and they told me it's just kind of a small part in it.
And I read it and I was like yeah,
it is a small part but I just think I could do something
kind of fun and cool with this,
but I'd like to talk to him.
So I had a meeting with Michel and I was like,
so saw I see this guy, he sits in his room by himself
playing the bass in his underwear, you know like.
I see him with like a pompadour.
He's like A pompadour!
I was like I don't know, kind of like that,
but like a mohawk, like half mohawk.
You know he's really into the clash,
and none of that was in the script really.
Michel was like, I love this man,
this sounds cool, this man!,
and he cast me.
It was an amazing experience
and we improvised so much of that movie
and we were writing it on the fly.
They came to us and like you're shooting
36,000 feet of film a day.
We had like four cameras rolling nonstop,
and focus actually came in and like shut us down.
They're like, You can't shoot this much.
But the camera would be rolling,
when we were just sitting there [beep] around.
And then Michel loved that.
He used a lot of that stuff in there.
Kirsten Dunst, there's this great scene
of us dancing in our underwear,
with Jim Carey's body laying there [chuckles].
That was totally improvised,
came out of us like passing a joint around
and like really feeling, oh I'm feeling that feeling,
you know, and then it just broke out
in this spontaneous stupid dancing.
To this day, like, a really sweet, sweet movie moment.
[upbeat music]
Zodiac.
Sometimes you're making characters up,
sometimes you're playing real people
and in that I played David Toschi,
who I was fortunate was still alive.
You're reading a script and you get one idea of a person.
He's like this hard-boiled, San Francisco murder cop.
And I'm gonna play him tough,
and then I said well I'd love to meet David Toschi.
Everyone is freaked out,
like you really want to meet him.
I was like yeah, I want to go hang out with him.
So I took a commuter flight to San Francisco.
And I went and met him.
He was working in a little security firm.
I went and spent the day with him.
I spent a few days with him in San Francisco.
I found that when you're playing other people,
the best thing to do is to get them drunk
or a little bit drunk,
because then that's when they really open up to you.
But you have to put yourself on the line too.
So you have to tell some embarrassing stories
about yourself first.
But after a while he won my trust.
He already looked at me like,
who's this Hollywood kid, what is he doing here?
I really like created a nice rapport with him
and really realized that my idea,
my Hollywood idea of him
was so far off from the truth.
And who he was and the idiosyncratic aspects
of the way he talked, the way he dressed,
even down to eating the animal crackers
were so much more interesting
than anything that I could have come up.
Some one have any animal crackers?
Animal crackers?
They're in the car.
I'm saving those for later.
David Fincher, who is my hero
and we had the most just incredible
kind of collaboration on that.
He's still one of my close friends.
We were all in my trailer, one night,
a Friday night drinking
and Fincher who never really carouses with the crew,
and he keeps a really strong border
between fraternizing, I poke my head out of my trailer,
and he was standing out there with an empty glass.
And he's smoking a cigarette,
probably his 10th cigarette in his life
and I was like, David.
He's like, Yeah, oh hey!
I was like, you wanna come in?
'Cause I'd always invite him to come by.
He's like, Oh are you are you guys there?
And I was like, yeah come on up.
And he's like, Oh, I guess I will then.
And he came in and I poured him a big shot of bourbon,
and we're sitting there.
After a while it was just him and I.
I'm like, how's it goin'?
He's like, I don't know.
And I said, [laughs] what do you mean?
And he's like, I don't know if they're gonna
kill me or not.
I don't know if this is working.
To have that kind of a moment with that kind of director,
in that kind of vulnerability
is also another gift of being in this business.
[upbeat music]
Shutter Island.
We have rehearsals and Marty was okay
these are the films I want you to see.
I have a screening room,
and we're going to watch these movies together.
And I'm sitting there, it's me and Marty and Leo.
We're watching Out of the Past.
And I turned to Marty and I'm like Marty,
what if my character,
because he's playing this other character,
that's not him, what if he went and watched
all these Robert Mitchum movies
and he's like doing a Robert Mitchum imitation,
because he sees it as the hard-boiled detective
that he thinks he should be.
And he's like, Oh yeah, do whatever you want kid.
We'll look at it.
We'll see how it works.
And so, yeah, I did that, and that whole character
came out of that Out of the Past screening.
It doesn't exactly square with Teddy Daniels,
the man in the legend, I'll give you that.
Leo and I went through like this crazy journey.
It was six months in rain.
We were wet the whole time.
We had wetsuits on underneath our clothes.
And I just remember, going to his trailer
and playing Xbox totally soaked,
shooting this you know 1930s movie
and we're in period costume.
The Kids are All Right.
[upbeat music]
My brother had just passed away just before that.
And I was really disillusioned
probably with my life but also like filmmaking,
and I was like this is gonna be my last movie as an actor.
It was an homage to my brother, the character.
My brother was this just incredibly charismatic
sexy dangerous, beautiful, fun, vivacious human being.
And so I'm like I'm gonna play him in this movie.
It was a great experience.
I felt free in a way that I hadn't
in a long, long time, as an actor.
I remember I made peace with the idea of stopping acting
and transitioning into more directing and writing.
I was at Sundance with it.
And I'll never forget I was sitting in the audience,
the first time I'd ever seen it,
and I heard the audience's response to it,
which was so sincere and beautiful
and was addressing this moment in time
and culture where we're talking about gay marriage,
and I saw like how important a film could be,
how much people enjoyed it
and how much I actually enjoyed it, really, deeply.
When I got outside the business of Hollywood
and just purely like the experience
of making films I was like, okay,
I'm not going anywhere.
And so I gave up the idea of like, you know,
what are the box offices,
what are the reviews?
What all that [beep] is and just focused
on what I actually had control over, and what gave me joy.
Annette Bening, Julianne Moore [chuckles].
The love scenes, the crazy,
you know, triangle, the humor.
What is wrong with me?
It's everything that I loved about cinema
and why I wanted to do it, and I just felt really free.
[upbeat music]
The original Avengers.
Part of me was like I'm the wrong guy.
This world, I don't know how to do this.
Joss Whedon sat me down and said,
No, I think you are the guy.
I said, I can't really sign on
to doing something unless I read a script.
That's the only power I have as an actor,
to be able to say no to something.
I don't know what the hell you're making.
He's like, How about if I send you 20 pages?
I read the scene when Black Widow comes to find Banner.
I read that scene and I knew the tone of it.
Then I will need to you to come in.
What if I say, no?
I'll persuade you.
And what if the other guy says, no?
And then I got a call from Robert Downey,
who's my hero, and he said, Come on, Ruffalo, we got this.
And that was it and I was in.
I've done so much motion capture.
I had to wear what I call the man canceling suit,
which is this really tight leotard
that makes you look big where you wanna look small
and small where you wanna look big.
I miss him man.
It was so humiliating and all the actors [chuckles]
whenever I'd walk on set would just start laughing
at me 'cause they were in their cool
superhero costumes and I'm wearing this ridiculous pajamas
that made me look like a Chinese checkerboard.
There was even one point where I catch Downey,
Hulk catches Downey, puts them on the ground right
and I decide I'm gonna do this Hulk roar over him
in my little leotard.
[Hulk roaring]
What the hell?
And he just kind of has [chuckles],
he has his eyes closed, and he opens one eye
and he's just like, Really Ruffalo?
That's what you're going with.
And that's what it's always been like.
In the last movie he came up to me and he said,
I have a lot of compassion for you.
And I was like why?
He's like, 'Cause I see how hard it is for you
to stand around in that costume all day.
[upbeat music]
Foxcatcher.
That thing had been around for a long time
and I kept asking to be seen for it,
because I was a wrestler.
And it was six months of wrestling
and working out and putting on 40 pounds, really grueling.
And all the wrestling you see in there is us wrestling.
And I had another real character.
Although he was, he wasn't alive.
But his family really opened themselves to me.
I really got to know Dave Schultz,
in a posthumous way.
Another great experience.
Channing Tatum, he's my bro.
We went through that experience together.
And, yeah, I'm really proud of that movie.
[upbeat music]
Spotlight.
Occasionally, you get movies that are just purely
for entertainment and you get movies
that are called forth from the culture.
In society we're having a conversation
about an important issue and Spotlight
was one of those things that Mike Rezendes,
another real life character, I spent weeks with him.
Again became really good friends with him.
Drank with him.
Ate with him, absorbed myself into that world
of The Washington Post at that particular time.
And the people who were the victims
of these priests molestation cases.
We need the full scope.
That's the only thing that will put an end to this.
Then let's take it up to Ben and let him decide.
We'll take it to Ben when I say it's time.
It's time Robbie!
It's time!
They knew and they let it happen to kids!
Okay, it could have been you!
It could have me!
It could have been any of us!
And that movie really sparked change in the world,
that's ongoing today.
A moment where you're in service of something
that's important that people needed to know about,
and that you can do with cinema,
in a way you can't do in any other form.
[upbeat music]
Dark Waters.
Yeah, I'm an activist.
I've been an activist, probably since the Iraq War,
it was when I kind of really got into it.
I began to see how powerful films were
and films could be in that space in a way
that you can't do as an activist.
Because stories transcend all the political
and ideological divides that immediately come up
when you're an activist.
As time has gone on I've wanted to blend
more of my activism with actual storytelling.
And this article came up and I just saw
it was a place in the space
that I've already been working in which was water,
and this incredible story about this lawyer
who was part of the system himself,
who was a corporate defense attorney
who was completely indoctrinated in that culture,
believed that corporations were people,
that corporations could self-regulate
that the government shouldn't have really
much to do with that regulation.
And he went through this experience
that he realized that, that whole idea
was a fallacy and a lie.
They want to show the world it's no use fighting.
Look everybody, even he can't crack the maze
and he's helped build it.
The system is rigged.
They want us to think it will protect us but that's a lie.
We protect us, we do.
I reached out to him.
I talked to him and his wife,
and I immediately fell in love with them and thought,
this has never been done quite like this
from this point of view.
And he's so antithetical to what a hero is,
to like the Hulk, our other superheroes.
It spoke about a story that transcended
all the political ideology.
When we're so divided right now,
I just felt like storytelling is a way
to unite people around these really big discussions
that we have to have in order
to make our world a better place.
And so that was my draw to play Robert Bilott
and take control of what I'm doing, going forward.
A big part of choosing a role for me is like,
does it challenge me?
Does it break me up?
Does it does it push me into places
that I never been before
that scares the [beep] out of me?
Is it a story or a person that expresses some dimension
of my beliefs or my feelings
and lastly is it something
that can actually add to
or facilitate or even even bring forth the conversation
that needs to happen.
I believe that the culture actually
calls the movie forward
at a particular moment in time,
when we're having a discussion
that is somehow encapsulated in that project.
Starring: Mark Ruffalo
Paul Bettany Revisits His Most Iconic Characters
Hank Azaria Runs Through His Iconic ‘Simpsons’ Voices and Movie Roles
Hugh Grant Has More Iconic Characters Than You Do
Terry Crews Breaks Down His Favorite Iconic Characters
Evan Peters Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Simon Pegg on His Most Iconic Characters
Ethan Hawke Goes Back in Time to Visit His Most Iconic Characters
Mark Wahlberg on His Most Iconic Characters
Jason Bateman on His Most Iconic Characters
Sissy Spacek Revisits Her Most Iconic Characters
Adam Devine Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Eric Idle Revisits His Most Iconic Characters
Lucas Hedges Tells GQ About His Iconic Roles
Michael Peña Bases His Characters Off People He Knows
Jeff Bridges Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Greg Kinnear Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sarah Jessica Parker Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Eddie Redmayne Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jonah Hill Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Oscar Isaac Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Alexander Skarsgard Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Claire Foy Runs Us Through Her Iconic Characters
Ben Mendelsohn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Hiro Murai Breaks Down His Most Iconic Music Videos
Zedd Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks
Jennifer Lopez Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Andy Serkis Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ken Jeong Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Willem Dafoe Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
St. Vincent Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Songs
Andrea Bocelli Runs Us Through His Iconic Tracks
Serena Williams on How She Became Serena Williams
Sugar Ray Leonard Breaks Down His Most Iconic Fights
Lionel Richie Takes GQ Through All His Hits
Kid Cudi Breaks Down His Iconic Tracks
Kyle MacLachlan Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Nicolas Cage Revisits His Most Iconic Characters
Paul McCartney Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs
Join Will Arnett on a Journey Through His Storied Career
Rob Schneider's Been Making You Laugh for Decades
Wiz Khalifa Breaks Down His Most Iconic Songs
Bill Hader Breaks Down His 9 Most Iconic Roles
Tim Roth Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Caleb Landry Jones Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Pedro Pascal Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ralph Fiennes Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Seth Rogen Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sir Ben Kingsley Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Alec Baldwin Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jon Hamm Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jake Gyllenhaal Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Alan Cumming Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Kevin Bacon Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
John Goodman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Gerard Butler Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sarah Paulson Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
DMX Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks
Cillian Murphy Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Forest Whitaker Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
David Copperfield Breaks Down His Most Iconic Illusions
Arnold Schwarzenegger Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Edward Norton Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Al Pacino Breaks Down 4 of His Most Iconic Characters
Tim Blake Nelson Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Mark Ruffalo Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ray Liotta Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Octavia Spencer Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Pedro Almodovar Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Danny DeVito Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jack Black Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Diego Luna Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ben Affleck Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Martin Freeman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Guy Pearce Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Nick Offerman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jeffrey Wright Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Martin Short Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Nicholas Hoult Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Justin Roiland Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Russell Crowe Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Michael K. Williams Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
John Cusack Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Gabourey Sidibe Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Vince Vaughn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
George Clooney Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jude Law Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Scott Glenn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Casey Affleck Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jared Leto Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Bob Odenkirk Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Salma Hayek Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Tom Hiddleston Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
David Harbour Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Wes Studi Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sean Penn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Elijah Wood Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Tony Leung Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Matt Damon Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Adrien Brody Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jeff Daniels Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
The Lox Break Down Their Most Iconic Tracks
Henry Cavill Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jeremy Renner Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jeff Goldblum Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Djimon Honsou Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Big Boi & Sleepy Brown Break Down Their Most Iconic Tracks
Christopher Lloyd Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Robert Pattinson Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Behind The Scenes with Cover Star Robert Pattinson
John Cena Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Francis Ford Coppola Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
John Turturro Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Michelle Yeoh Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
Kiefer Sutherland Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Marlon Wayans Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Mike Myers Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Seth MacFarlane Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Jerry Bruckheimer Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Andy Garcia Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Chris Hemsworth Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
John Lithgow Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ewan McGregor Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Taika Waititi Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Yunjin Kim Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
The Russo Brothers Break Down Their Most Iconic Marvel Films, Arrested Development & More
Rae Sremmurd Break Down Their Most Iconic Tracks
Neil Patrick Harris Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Karl Urban Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ralph Macchio Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Pierce Brosnan Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Christian Bale Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Paul Dano Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Daniel Radcliffe Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Mahershala Ali Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Javier Bardem Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Brendan Fraser Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
James Cameron Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
James McAvoy Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Director Rian Johnson Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
"Weird Al" Yankovic Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks
Danny Trejo Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Don Cheadle Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Giancarlo Esposito Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Bryan Cranston Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Donnie Yen Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Paul Rudd Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sir Roger Deakins Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Chris Tucker Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
John Leguizamo Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Dave Matthews Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks
Liev Schreiber Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Ludacris Breaks Down His Most Iconic Tracks
Danny Elfman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Scores (Tim Burton Edition)
Mads Mikkelsen Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Michael Cera Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Chris Evans Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Paul Giamatti Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Barry Keoghan Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Kurt Russell Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Sam Rockwell Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Clive Owen Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Josh Brolin Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
John Malkovich Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Eugene Levy Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Michael Keaton Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Danny McBride Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (NIN) Break Down Their Most Iconic Tracks
Zack Snyder Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
Kevin Costner Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Walton Goggins Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Cate Blanchett Breaks Down Her Most Iconic Characters
M. Night Shyamalan Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
J. K. Simmons Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters