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[frustratedcastingdirector]

Mark Ruffalo: You can count on him to step back

February 4, 2001

Author/Byline: Reed Johnson Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD -- So here’s Mark Ruffalo, fresh from his star-making turn as a moody slacker in the hit film ‘‘You Can Count on Me,’’ winner of the best actor award at the Montreal Film Festival, young, gifted, ambitious and hot, hot, hot.

What’s his next big career move? Make a boffo Hollywood action pic? Go on Letterman to tout the six feature films he’s working on with brand-name commodities like John Woo, Nicolas Cage, Robert Redford and Gwyneth Paltrow?

Or, um, take time off from his skyrocketing film career to direct a play by a little-known writer about the aftershocks of a young girl’s suicide on a ’60s suburban community. At a 99-seat theater. On an iffy stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard. For no money.

And they wonder why Hollywood agents get ulcers.

Actually, this gig directing his friend Tim McNeil’s play ‘‘Margaret’’ at the Hudson Backstage Theatre isn’t some eccentric reverse-career move. Ruffalo regards it as a homecoming, an attempt to reconnect with a place many Hollywood insiders consider the worst possible training ground for any young actor intent on making the cover of Vanity Fair: L.A.’s prodigious but often underappreciated 99-seat theater community.

‘‘You say you’re a New York theater actor and they put you to the front of the line. You say you did theater in Los Angeles and they think you’re an amateur,’’ Ruffalo says.

Yet without L.A.’s small theater scene, Ruffalo swears, he couldn’t have made the great leap forward into TV (the New York cop drama ‘‘The Beat’’) and celluloid (‘‘Committed,’’ ‘‘Ride With the Devil,’’ ‘‘Studio 54’’). And without it today, he might be going slightly bonkers.

‘‘I wanted to put the brakes on a little bit,’’ says the actor, who’s splitting his time between the Hudson and rural Valencia, where Woo is shooting the $120-million World War II drama ‘‘Windtalkers,’’ starring Cage and Christian Slater. Ruffalo plays a Greek American soldier assigned to protect two Navajo Indians, whose native tongue was used by the U.S. Army as a code to foil Japanese eavesdroppers.

‘‘It’s pretty heady stuff, everything that’s happening for me right now,’’ he continues, ‘‘and I know at the bottom of it, it’s all because of my theater training, it’s all because of the years I put into doing plays. It’s probably been about six months since my last play, so I wanted to get my theater muscle back into working order. It keeps me humble.’’

Humility was probably Ruffalo’s best available option until three years ago, when he stunned the New York theater world with his performance in Kenneth Lonergan’s acerbic off-Broadway comedy ‘‘This Is Our Youth.’’

Playing a scruffy Upper West Side ne’er-do-well who rips off his father and gets caught up in a drug deal, Ruffalo put some reviewers in mind of a young Marlon Brando. His fumblingly articulate character, a slouchy, rebellious boy-man who actually totes around a bag of toys, conveyed a kind of suppressed sweetness along with a profound alienation camouflaged by humor.

Many film critics were equally profuse in their praise of Ruffalo’s efforts in Lonergan’s film directing debut, ‘‘You Can Count on Me,’’ which Lonergan also wrote. Cast as a physically and emotionally unruly younger brother to Laura Linney’s responsible, no-nonsense sister, Ruffalo once again was able to locate the rumpled, rebellious charm in a potentially annoying, even unattractive character.

‘‘He’s very direct emotionally and it makes him very exciting as an actor,’’ Lonergan says. ‘‘And that’s how he is as a friend too.’’

Until Ruffalo received the New York seal of approval, his tendency to make himself open and available wasn’t reciprocated by Hollywood.

‘‘I couldn’t get a job here,’’ he says. ‘‘I went away to New York in ’97 and did (‘This Is Our Youth’), and it was a big hit. And I came back to L.A., and all the L.A. casting directors and producers and all these people are saying, ‘Where did you come from? Oh my God, where have you been all these years?’ And I said, ‘I’ve been right under your noses! Why don’t you do your jobs?!’ ’’

It’s a measure of Ruffalo’s equanimity, which sometimes masquerades as nonchalance, that he’s able to make light of his past career struggles. Yes, he admits, he used to be bitter about Hollywood’s early snubs. But what’s the point?

‘‘I think things happen in their good time,’’ he says gently. ‘‘And in a lot of ways, maybe I wasn’t ready. And all those years of struggling here built character. You know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’’

[frustratedcastingdirector]

“Just Like Heaven” premiere.

Big Pic - Open in new tab. 

[frustratedcastingdirector]

Benicio & Mark Stella Adler Academy of Acting alums. :-)

[frustratedcastingdirector]

Mark Ruffalo's career is in full swing. His starring role in ‘Zodiac' is just the start.

Author/Byline: BARRY KOLTNOW    Orange County Register   March 2, 2007

When pressed, Hollywood producer Bradley Fischer will concede that Hollywood producers occasionally lie. For instance, when they tell you that a certain actor was their first and only choice for a particular role, they're usually lying. More often than not, a role is filled by the first competent actor who accepts the part. "I know people always say that, but I swear that it's true in this case," the producer said with his hand raised, pleading his case. "Mark was always our first and only choice." Fischer said he respects Mark Ruffalo's work from their collaboration on last year's "All the King's Men," but he said has been a fan since he first saw the actor in the 2000 film "You Can Count on Me." Ruffalo, 39, was cast by Fischer and director David Fincher to play a real-life San Francisco homicide detective whose investigation and stalking of a serial killer becomes a personal obsession in "Zodiac," which opens today. "Most directors and producers never say they need a movie star. That's something you might hear from the marketing department," Fischer said. "What most directors and producers say they need is an actor, and Mark is one of those actors who directors and producers always go to when they need one of the best in the business." High praise, indeed, for an actor who believes that as recently as five years ago, he was considered "damaged goods" in the movie industry. Fresh off his triumphant turn in the 2000 film "You Can Count on Me," Ruffalo was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but he was out of action for 10 months, which is a lifetime for an actor just coming off his big break. "Right after the movie, lots of offers were coming in, but then my career completely cooled off," he said. "There was no work at all, and rumors were circulating that I had AIDS and leukemia. Some people actually heard that I was dead." Ruffalo credits two directors – Jane Campion and Isabel Coixet – for resurrecting his career by giving him major roles in their films, "In the Cut" and "My Life Without Me." It wasn't the first time a director had saved Ruffalo from oblivion. It was a chance meeting with director-playwright Kenneth Lonergan in 1986 that, literally, dragged Ruffalo out of a Los Angeles bar and into show business. Ruffalo wasn't drinking in the bar; he was working in it as a bartender. In fact, the aspiring actor tended bar in Los Angeles for nine years while trying to get his foot in the proverbial show-business door. The most frustrating aspect of his bartending career was that he was working in one of Hollywood's hippest nightspots, the bar at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel. "It was a horrible period," he said, the pain still evident in his voice. "I was interfacing every night with everyone I wanted to be. All the young working actors hung out there, and there was a lot of resentment on my part. My friends used to call me Bit 'O Honey, because I was really bitter about these actors having the jobs I wanted, but I always acted sweet to them. "I admit that I'm pretty much one of those glass-is-half-empty kind of guys, rather than the glass-is-half-full guys. I even take it a step further by saying: 'And look how small the glass is, too.' In my heart, I hoped that something would happen, but deep down I kept thinking that it was never really going to happen for me." When he met Lonergan, the two men hit it off, and Lonergan asked Ruffalo to star in a one-act play he was directing in a small Los Angeles theater. That one-act play eventually expanded into the well-received off-Broadway play "This Is Our Youth," and Ruffalo's performance garnered rave reviews. Lonergan later cast Ruffalo opposite Laura Linney in the film he was directing, "You Can Count on Me." Ruffalo, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, was born in Kenosha, Wis., but spent his high school years in Virginia Beach, Va., before the family moved to San Diego. He set out on his own for Los Angeles, where he attended acting classes and auditioned for roles he didn't get. "I was too tall or too short, too ethnic or not ethnic enough," he said. "There was always some reason for them to say no to me." But his career is in full swing now, with three films awaiting release, not counting Fincher's "Zodiac." The new film also stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Gray-smith, then-editorial cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle whose two books on the Zodiac case are the basis of Fincher's film, and Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, the newspaper's colorful crime reporter whose obsession with the serial killer almost destroyed him. Ruffalo's character, homicide detective Dave Toschi, also became obsessed with the mystery murderer who terrorized the Bay Area starting in 1968. He is believed to have killed at least five people, and boasted of his dastardly deeds in letters sent to local newspapers. He taunted law-enforcement agencies and dared them to catch him. Fincher, who grew up in the area but was only 7 years old at the time of the first killings, says he has only fleeting memories of the terror that gripped the northern part of the state. He does, however, remember riding in school buses accompanied by a police escort. The director has traveled this path before, making a serial-killer movie in 1995 called "Se7en," but this film is different. Unlike his earlier film, "Zodiac" does not follow the killer, but rather the investigation of the crimes and the pursuit of the killer. "David (Fincher) was not interested in repeating himself," producer Fischer explained. "He wanted to make a movie about how this killer got under these people's skins. This is a movie about obsession." The producer said he never doubted the filmmaker's choice for the actor who would play Toschi, who was the inspiration for the character played by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film "Bullitt," right down to his upside-down shoulder holster. But the brilliance of the casting choice was confirmed after he set up a meeting between Ruffalo and Toschi. "Mark shadowed Dave all day and, when he returned to L.A. that night, he was speaking exactly like Toschi. It was eerie." Sitting in his Westwood hotel suite, the soft-spoken Ruffalo needs no prodding to jump into a dead-on, but respectful, impression of Toschi, who is in his 70s but works full time for a Bay Area security firm. "The man is remarkable," Ruffalo said. "He still dresses to the nines, and he has managed to maintain his dignity, even though the case did not end as he had hoped." For the record, no one was ever charged or prosecuted for the Zodiac murders, although investigators privately were satisfied that they had found their man. "In his heart, Dave Toschi knew that the suspect he was chasing was the right guy," Ruffalo said. "But it doesn't matter what he believes. He's a good cop and, like any good cop, he needs solid evidence to make a case. "He spent so many years on this case, only to have it end in frustration. To maintain your dignity after an ordeal like that makes Dave Toschi an amazing character to play." Mark Ruffalo: partial filmography "You Can Count on Me" (2000) "The Last Castle" (2001) "View From the Top" (2003) "In the Cut" (2003) "My Life Without Me" (2003) "We Don't Live Here Anymore" (2004) "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) "13 Going on 30" (2004) "Collateral" (2004) "Just Like Heaven" (2005) "Rumor Has It" (2005) "All the King's Men" (2006) "Zodiac" (2007)

[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.