#and i’ve never been able to articulate myself well to hairdressers

[transcerat0ps]

i really want a good haircut but the whole experience of finding a queer friendly barber is sooo anxiety inducing

[frustratedcastingdirector]

MARK RUFFALO HAD HIS FIRST TASTE OF ACTING AT FIRST COLONIAL HIGH SCHOOL IN VIRGINIA BEACH. EIGHTEEN YEARS AND LOTS OF STRUGGLES LATER, HE'S HIT THE BIG TIME.

The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) - June 18, 2002   

Author/Byline: MAL VINCENT, THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

THERE WAS A TIME when Mark Ruffalo's only claim to fame was as a champion wrestler at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach. Acting was not on the radar screen.

Things have changed.

He's on the Hollywood A-list. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association gave him its New Generation Award in 2000. That same year, the Montreal World Film Festival gave him its Best Actor award for his performance in ``You Can Count on Me.''

He's starred with Robert Redford (``The Last Castle'') and he's appearing as an Italian-American Marine with Nicolas Cage in ``Windtalkers.'' Upcoming co-stars include Gwyneth Paltrow (``A View from the Top''), Meg Ryan (``In The Cut'') and Ashley Judd (Tennessee Williams' ``Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' on Broadway).

This is not just another story of local-boy-makes-good. This is most definitely local boy makes the big time. We're talking international fame and fortune - a long way from his role as one of the Sharks in the chorus of First Colonial High School's ``West Side Story.''

Sitting in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, Ruffalo, 34, showed some of that little-boy awe that some of his critics rave about. For a guy who plays Marines and is chosen for tough-guy roles, he is refreshingly down-to-earth, sensitive and honest. He's not at all the truck driver you'd expect.

``All this is something to take in stride,'' he said. ``It's taken so long to get to this point. I've been through the mill. This is no overnight success. It's been 18 years of going to auditions and getting turned down. Once every year or so, I'd think about quitting after people would ask me what I was doing. I'd tell them I was an actor, but they had never seen me in anything.''

He surprised Hollywood when he decided to direct a play at a small Los Angeles theater rather than to rush into a big movie after his ``You Can Count on Me'' success.

``I've had to reassess why I love acting and what it took to get here,'' he said. ``My main criterion should be that I love what I'm doing. I feel kind of tingly all over when people talk to me about all the offers, but it comes and goes. I'm not overly floored by it all. To tell you the truth, it rings empty when you finally get there. I'm fully aware that this type thing comes and goes. It can go more easily than it came.''

He describes Virginia Beach as ``a magical place to grow up. It was one of the few places I lived for more than a year. If it wasn't for the culture and ideas I got there, I never would have gone into acting.''

Ruffalo, the oldest of four children (a brother and two sisters), came to Virginia Beach from Kenosha, Wis., when he was 13. His father was a painting contractor who worked on nuclear submarines.

After Virginia Beach, the family moved to San Diego where there were lots of drugs. ``We had tearing apart and then anger, resentment and frustration.''

He is now close to his brother and two sisters. Both sisters, as well as his mother, are former hairdressers. His sister, Tonya, has moved back to Virginia Beach.

Ruffalo's local acting break came when a classmate broke an arm two weeks before the play ``Runaways'' opened at First Colonial, and he stepped in to play a detective.

He fondly remembers Nancy Curtis, his drama teacher there. ``I was the wrestling champ, but I was in awe of the people in Mrs. Curtis' class. I didn't feel I was as good as anyone there. I didn't want to get up and participate in class exercises.''

Curtis continues to teach drama at First Colonial.

``Mark has a genuineness that is very real. He doesn't hide anything,'' she said. ``He feels on a lot of different levels and is able to articulate all of them on stage. In high school, he initially was more interested in things that interest male adolescents. He had lots of girlfriends. I saw talent in him, but I felt if I pushed him, he might pull in the opposite direction.

``Finally, he came to me and asked if I thought he had any talent for acting. I told him that he definitely did. He seemed so excited about that - as if it was something he hadn't imagined.

``I haven't seen him or hugged him in a long time,'' Curtis said, ``but I'm sure that he remains the same person. I don't think all this will change him. I'm not surprised that he more or less just walked into the Stella Adler acting school and was accepted. He was always wonderful in auditions. He gets right to the heart of the character.''

After high school, college was not an option for Ruffalo.

``For one thing, the family didn't have money. For another, I couldn't see myself in college anyway,'' he said. ``We moved to San Diego and the family fell apart in many ways.''

The turning point in his life came because of a Virginia Beach tragedy. His best friend committed suicide at age 24. Ruffalo came back for the funeral.

``It was such a defining moment in my life. I loved him so much. It was such a needless tragedy. I saw the devastation that it caused to everybody. It made me value my life and my relationships. I knew, from that point, that I had to do something with my life - that I had to pull it together.''

The exclusive Stella Adler Academy of Acting welcomed him. Initially, he drove from San Diego to Los Angeles for the classes.

Eventually work came, mostly in independent films and television. He was in ``Committed'' with Heather Graham, Ang Lee's Civil War Western ``Ride With the Devil,'' and the disco-oriented ``54.'' He wrote and starred in ``The Destiny of Marty Fine'' which was first runner-up at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. On television, his series debut ``The Beat'' was a flop, despite the fact that it was created by Academy Award winner (``Rain Man'') Barry Levinson.

Kenneth Lonergan, who directed him to a Lucille Lortel Best Actor award off-Broadway, said, ``He's very peculiar and very appealing. He's drawn to playing the sort of person who is very open and simultaneously very distressed.''

Lonergan also cast him as the hippie brother of uptight Laura Linney in ``You Can Count On Me,'' the little independent movie that put him on the map.

He's married to actress Sunrise Coigney, whom he met on the set of ``The Beat,'' and they live near the small village of Callicoon in upstate New York with their 11-month-old son, Keen.

``Up until now, my life has been centered around the theater,'' he said. ``Suddenly, this little boy comes along, and I realize there is another center of the world - someone who really needs me. Keen is my best friend and the center of my life, probably from now on.

``When you move around the way I did and people come and go so much, it means something for me to have this kind of permanency now,'' he said.

But what about two actors in the family? Will the usual rivalry develop?

``The baby is taking up a good portion of my wife's life right now, but I think it's best to be married to another actor. It's a chaotic lifestyle that demands an enormous amount of understanding. At some point, I would be glad to stay at home and take care of the baby so that she can go back to acting.''

So, what did he buy with that first big paycheck?

``My first really substantial check was $30,000. That was a lot of money to me. I bought a little farmhouse in upstate New York. We love to canoe and snowboard. Since then, I've got a larger house in the same area. We have 27 acres of land. I've never had any money until now. I've always lived in other people's houses - people that would let me sleep on the couch so that I could go to auditions. Now, for the first time, I have some permanency.''

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A pretty nice article from Virginia Beach, though be mindful of some inaccuracies, as with any article. :-)

Credit to (and my thanks, always), to that magnificent repository of Ruffalo images, Mark Ruffalo Central, for the lovely photo to accompany the article.

[bobskiii87-blog]

People Tell Us About Their Work Nightmares

Every single time it goes down the same. I’m up on stage, doing my best to DJ to a mostly satisfied crowd, and it’s time to find the next record. The song I’ve just put on is not making too many people happy. Nightclub patron grumpiness abounds. I’m frantically searching for the next album in my crate, but all the albums I packed for that night are either unrecognizable, or some sort of CanCon garbage I haven’t listened to since high school. Damn it. Nobody here wants to listen to Hawksley Workman. Why did I even bring that to the club? I think to myself through a tsunami of panic. With time quickly running out, I find a suitable song to play next. I pull out the record, and crushingly, the vinyl inside does not match the sleeve. The song playing runs out. Dead air fills the nightclub. The crowd boos and groans. Then, the lights come on, everyone empties out, and curiously the booming voice of my boss from the wine store I worked at when I was 18 comes over the PA “Trevor Risk is no longer allowed to be a DJ.”

This is my recurring dream I’ve been having about my primary occupation for the last decade and a half. Recently, I asked some of my fellow DJs if this is common with them. Evidently, from the sample size of my query, this is a dream many people with my profession have. It got me wondering: Do most people have a persistent dream about their job, and is it the same as their colleagues’? I asked a bouncer, a trauma surgeon, a comedian, a porn performer and a few others to help me find out.

Nathan, 31 ER doctor

My work nightmares consist of either being too tired to properly work or my pager going off.

It's not uncommon for me to dream I've been woken up from sleep and rushing to an emergency, only to find that I'm just too tired to stand up, let alone lead a resuscitation. Everyone is asking me what to do next and I keep falling asleep on my feet, unable to articulate my plan. Then I wake up.

The second common nightmare is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, scrambling around my room for my pager—except it's a Saturday, I'm at home, and I realize there is no pager going off. It wasn't even turned on.

Many other residents I work with have some sort of variation on both of those themes. Having a nightmare about a situation that you should be able to handle but, for some reason or other, just can't. Hearing alarms ringing endlessly throughout dreams until you wake up to see if it's real isn't uncommon either.

Chelsea, 26 Porn filmmaker

I have frequent nightmares about traveling to set and missing a flight or forgetting my camera gear. Like there would be really hot babes waiting for hours just sitting there bored because of me. I think I travel a bit more than most people in my field, so hours of anxiety worrying about flight delays is fairly unique to me.

Rempel, 31 Hairdresser

I don’t remember my dreams unless I’m stressed which isn’t often. When I do remember them, they stay with me for a couple of sleeps, which is annoying to have something/someone affect me so greatly. Any time I have a client come back to me for a redo (when they want an adjustment to something they dislike about their hair) I will dream about everything I could have possibly done differently to their hair to produce the desired outcome until I see them. It’s horrible and incredibly helpful at the same time. On the rare occasion I have an asshole in my chair, that personality haunts me for weeks. Usually that nightmare isn’t that client in the salon, just in a nightmare situation. Like I’m being hunted and that client is who’s hunting me. Ugh.

Other nightmares include: putting in highlights in a client’s hair but never reaching the end of it, where it feels like you’ve worked a whole shift and then you wake up and feel like you’ve never left work and now have to return. It’s so boring that it almost feels like real life. One of the best ones that feels like a true nightmare that my boss told me revolves around putting a client under the dryer and when you check on them, their hair falls out and their scalp is burnt, pus-filled and disgusting.

Courtni, 23 Porn performer

I guess the most frequent work nightmare I have is literally shit. Like, that I'm shooting an anal scene and I end up accidentally pooping everywhere. One dream continued beyond that to the shoot actually being released as is and it became so popular I ended up only getting scat work after that. (No judgement towards people who shoot scat scenes, get your freak on.)

Graham, 37 Comedian

I will have dreams where I'm onstage and I'm telling a joke that is going really, really well. It's a joke I've never done before, but it's the best joke I've ever told. This joke is the career maker. Then I wake up and I cannot remember word one of the joke. It's heartbreaking every time.

Virginia, 27 Stripper

The recurring nightmare I have is that I come out on stage and all the people sitting there are friends and customers from my old daytime job. Everyone is sitting there looking at me, the music is too quiet and I keep tripping over myself trying to strip. I can't get my clothes off properly and I keep falling and everyone is laughing. As for colleagues, I've never heard this exact one but similar scenarios with familiar faces (family, fathers, uncles, friends) for sure.

Samara, 28 Flight attendant

In my dream land, be it on the plane or in my hotel room, I’ve panicked more than once remembering that someone wanted water, snacks or service of some sort. I’ll be lounging on my layover and the striking thought enters my mind, “Oh NO! 26 Delta didn’t get her water!” The feeling of true panic in the dream is not far from reality, a feeling I’d only relate to missing a flight or burning my only pizza, and I often wake up thinking “I’m a bad flight attendant” as a result. It doesn’t take long to realize I was only dreaming, though I’ll often think and giggle about it during service later in real time.

After waking up in a sweat thinking about everything I forgot to do while on active shift I’ve come back to work to tell my crew about the hilarity of feeling panicked over forgetting water. I’ve gotten a multitude of stories in response, also around the theme of forgetting and being a bad flight attendant. There’s a lot of pressure in this job and I think it comes from insecurity that we aren’t perfect. Either way, I’ll try not to forget your water.

Christine, 29 Actor/comedian

Recurring nightmare: That I've shit myself on stage, but haven't noticed, and everyone is too polite to tell me.

Laine, 22 Nightclub bouncer

The only nightmare I've had about work is that I find a couple having sex in the nightclub and I can't remove them. They are usually underneath the stage in the club's storage area. I draw back the curtains the cover the entrance to the area—which is easily accessible from the dance floor—and, no matter what I do, I can't part them. They usually resemble a ball of mating snakes. Eventually, I wake up while struggling to escort them out.

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