I woke up from that dream, I was sobbing. I was pretty - I felt like I was going to die.
It was like, serious.
He had to fight for his very first movie role, which came fairly late in life.
He had to fight through personal bouts of depession.
He had to fight a debilitating tumour in his head, which threatened to end everything.
And to this day, he still has no hearing on his left side.
And yet, here he is.
Oscar-nominated actor, part of the widely popular Marvel franchise, playing the Incredible Hulk
in the brand new movie, Thor Ragnarok.
Nice to meet you!
- Hey, how are you? - Thanks for doing this.
What was the film that changed you the most?
A profoundly different Mark went in that came out the other side.
Uh, probably Foxcatcher.
'Cause I realised that I was old, and that my body -
there are certain things my body shouldn't be trying to do at the age that I was at.
And if I did try and do them, it would break and not ever come back again.
What did you lose from that process?
My confidence.
Really?
Basically.
Being in a big Oscar-nominated movie actually damaged your confidence, instead of the other way around?
It damaged my body, which made my confidence follow.
Your confidence follows your body.
Some part of me always felt like I would go back
and I would wrestle state tournaments as an older man in the senior's division.
I really did!
Because you wrestled as a teenager, didn't you?
I did yeah, and I had this fantasy that I was somehow a really great, talented wrestler.
I live in the fantasy world often.
You picked a good profession then, didn't you?
Yes, I did. But I did, I harboured this idea for years. I even pitched it to my dad.
I was like, "Dad, I'm thinking about going in the senior's division
and showing other older men that your life's not over."
And then I wrestled all these young, Olympic wrestlers and they broke me.
And I realised, that little part of me, that little fantasy, it died.
It didn't quite die, though -
It died with me.
Well, yes and no though.
Because I've seen there's some great footage of you that people will know from this movie
where you are basically taking Thor and you're smacking him around.
And is it true that you shot those scenes with a teeny, tiny, child-size Thor mannequin?
Yes.
Is that true?
Yes.
What does that mannequin look like in real life?
I showed up, it's a stage that has about a hundred cameras set up in all different places
and I'd do a lot of the stunt stuff in this space.
And so, I show up there and there's this little mannequin, this little rubber mannequin about this tall
and he's wearing Thor's clothes, and he's wearing Thor's helmet and I'm like, ha ha!
And they're like, 'No. That's serious. That's who you're gonna beat up.'
And so then I spent the next three or four hours doing dropkicks on him
and throwing him, and banging him around.
You have the best job.
It's amazing.
Hulk like fire. Don't like water.
We kinda both like fire.
A little known thing about you is that your mum, and several members of your family, are hairdressers.
That's correct.
This is going to be the movie, for a great many reasons
is going to be remembered as the movie where Thor finally cuts off his hair.
Did you at least have complex opinions about what kind of hair cut he should end up with?
I did. Part of my joy in the morning is going to his hair trailer and listening to him fight with his hair guy.
It's a good morning ritual.
Oh my god, it's amazing.
'Get away from me! You don't know what you're doing!'
'Oh, Chris, you don't know, man! It needs to be not so shiny.'
Some people may or may not know this about you, but for a period of time in your life you had a tumour
that was removed from your head.
Acoustic neroma.
Is it true that you had a dream about it, before you went and got checked out?
That's true.
What was it about that dream that gave you the impetus that like, I should go get this checked out?
'Cause that's a fairly intense dream, I imagine.
It was a really uh, it wasn't like any other dream I'd ever had.
It wasn't a narrative, it wasn't like a story like you see in many normal dreams.
It was literally just like, knowledge.
It was just like, you have a tumour.
It wasn't even a voice, it was just knowledge
and the knowledge was that you have a tumour, in the left side of your head behind your ear
and you have to deal with it immediately.
Wow.
I woke up from that dream, I was sobbing, I was pretty - I felt like I was going to die, it was that serious.
And I went to set the next day, I was working on a movie
and I went to the set doctor, and I said 'Listen doc, I know this going to sound crazy but uh,'
'I had a dream last night that I had a tumour, and I would really like to get it checked out.'
And she's like, 'Well yeah, you are crazy.'
But, she's like, 'I'll set up, line up a neurologist and we'll have him look at it and you'll see you're fine.'
And I was sitting there, I did the CAT scan, and I'm sitting there
and the neurologist nurse takes him out, takes her out of the room, and I can hear her in the room next door
talking to the neurologist, you know, brain tumour, 3cm, the size of a golf ball.
Perhaps inoperable. I can hear them talking.
All the things you don't want to hear.
Yeah, but I already knew.
And she walked in, and she was like white as ghost. And she sat down and she was like
'You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball.'
'And we don't know what it is yet.'
So they went in, and it was removed. And for a period of time, I understand, your face was left paralysed.
Yes, that sucked. I woke up after that and my face was paralysed, and I couldn't close my eye.
And that carried on for about six months.
And they were basically like, well after six months the chances of it coming back are like
you probably will never, never get that back.
And I started doing all of this alternative stuff. I was doing acupuncture, craniosacral therapy
I was doing osteopath, I was doing Chinese medicine. I was doing anything that I could possibly find.
And after acupuncture one day, me and my wife were in the car and literally I was like
looking in the little mirror, and I was like 'Baby, look!'
'I can move my face!'
'I can move my face, baby!'
And she, and we both burst out crying. It was the most amazing thing. All I could do was literally go like this.
Just lift this the tiniest bit.
And that became slowly but surely, it started to come back.
So what did it teach you about yourself?
Uh, well two things. It taught me that I was frail. And it also taught me that I was incredibly strong.
There's a second act but also that life is very tenuous. It's very fragile.
That you never know what's going to come.
You can't take it for granted.
Mark Ruffalo, thanks so much for your time.
Nice talking to you.