Hi, everyone!
It’s Samantha!
From the loss of friends to a serious medical diagnosis, today we look at the sad real-life
story of Mark Ruffalo!
13.
Rocky Start
Mark Alan Ruffalo came into the world on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
His mother, Marie Rose, worked as a hairstylist, and his father, Frank Lawrence Ruffalo Jr.,
worked as a painter in construction.
When he was thirteen years old, Mark and his family, including his three siblings, Tania,
Scott, and Nicole, moved to Virginia Beach after his father’s company fell apart; so,
he began a different business, Soda Butler, where he’d deliver syrup to people’s houses,
and they would carbonate their own soda pop.
Unfortunately for the family, the venture didn’t last long.
Mark later told Parade, “That fizzled out.
We got poorer and poorer.
It caused a lot of anger at home.”
Although his home life wasn’t great, Mark was doing well on his school wrestling team
and he noted that it “was a way of connecting to [his] dad.”
Ruffalo also said that he always felt like one of the theater club kids.
After he graduated high school, their family moved to San Diego.
He said that their time in the city was terrible for them and added, “There was a lot of
tension at home, and it just blew up.
My dad couldn’t make it and went back to Wisconsin.”
12.
Acting
Despite his family’s hardships and struggles after his father left, he realized his passion
for acting and started to pursue a career in the field.
Mark was accepted into the Stella Adler Conservatory in Los Angeles when he was nineteen years
old.
He later said, “When I walked into class...and head them talking about art and acting and
about becoming greater than you are, it was like music to my ears.
I thought, “This is it.
I have a purpose in life.”
However, getting your foot in the Hollywood door isn’t as easy at it sounds.
He spent about nine years of attending classes and working at a dive bar.
Mark auditioned for hundreds of times without getting a significant role.
11.
Plays & Films
Mark finally scored a leading part in the play This Is Our Youth in 1998.
This Off-Broadway play received wonderful reviews and was the beginning of his career
in film.
He then played in the movie Safe Men that same year and in Ride with the Devil a year
later.
Mark portrayed Alf Bowden in the latter, which gained him a little more attention.
After that, he started getting more significant roles in films like XX/XY, My Life Without
Me, and In the Cut.
He went on to star in even bigger films, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind alongside
Jim Carrey, We Don’t Live Here Anymore with Laura Dern, and Collateral with Tom Cruise.
Mark also garnered recognition with the part of Matt Flamhaff in 13 Going on 30 alongside
Jennifer Garner.
He acted in a few more movies as well before getting a leading role in the Broadway play
Awake and Sing! in 2006.
Mark even received a Tony Award nomination for “Best Featured Actor in a Play.”
He then played in 2007’s Zodiac, and 2009’s Where the Wild Things Are, and 2010’s Shutter
Island, which he received a couple of award nominations for.
In 2017, Mark performed in another Broadway show called The Price, which he starred in
as Victor Franz.
10.
Anger Management
Since he played the Hulk in the movies, it might not be too surprising that Mark Ruffalo
had some anger management issues in real life as well.
It also isn’t shocking considering the frustration he dealt with when beginning his new acting
career.
We mentioned previously that he had auditioned hundreds of times for parts without ever attaining
a significant role… but Ruffalo himself noted that it was between six and eight hundred
times!
That’s an insane amount.
It’s safe to say anyone would be upset after a while.
He told the New York Daily News, “You should have seen me in my twenties man…
I was the poster definition of an angry young man…
I was struggling as a young actor, suffering through imagined or real slights from other
people’s hands.”
He added, “...there was a time if you came into my apartment, there were pictures and
posters hanging in very odd places where they were covering fist-holes through walls…
Glasses had been thrown through, coffee mugs, books, whatever I could get a hold of.”
Now we know his hard work paid off.
9.
Health Issues
When things were finally looking up in Mark’s life, they went south pretty quickly.
He had finally become a successful actor.
He was in a happy marriage, and his wife had just given birth to their son.
He later stated, “A few weeks after my son was born, I had a bad dream and woke up in
tears.
In the dream, I knew I had a brain tumor.”
Mark said that the dream was so realistic that he went and got checked out.
He was diagnosed with a brain tumor called a vestibular schwannoma, also called an acoustic
neuroma.
Mark had to undergo surgery to remove the tumor, which was thankfully benign.
He said in an interview with the Acoustic Neuroma Association, “I was certain I was
going to die.
I made a tape for [my son], for when he was old enough to understand.
Just saying, ‘Hey, this is who I am.’...
I just had this fear of dying on the operating table.
Luckily, they were able to remove the entire tumor and preserve his nerve.
8.
Paralyzed
Unfortunately for Mark, the bad news didn’t stop there even though they had successfully
removed the tumor.
He was no longer able to hear with his left ear, and the entire left side of his face
was paralyzed.
Mark said to Parade, “Every day, after I got home, I’d look in the mirror to see
if my face was moving at all.
It wasn’t.”
He noted that after dealing with the paralysis for several months, “...my wife was driving
us home.
I was looking at myself in the car’s vanity mirror.
I saw a tiny twitch.
I was telling my eye to twitch, and it did.
Then I signaled my eye to close.
And it almost did!
I showed my wife.
We started jumping for joy… and we just burst into tears.”
It was the first sign that his face was returning to normal after a long period of stress and
wondering whether or not he’d be able to continue acting.
He added that another few months after that, his face was completely back to normal.
Mark also stated, “Looking back, everything that seemed a curse was really the best possible
thing, even my tumor.
I had a whole year with my son and wife, every waking hour…
I wouldn’t give any of it back.
I’ve learned that even in sorrow, there’s joy.”
7.
Meditation
We discussed earlier that Mark Ruffalo dealt with some anger management issues when he
was trying to get his career up and running.
We know that he eventually did, but how did he get his frustration under control?
Mark told Rolling Stone that he had a friend who was struggling with substance dependence
and added, “He did the [meditation] program, and we hooked up again after a couple years...He
had been the angriest man in the world, and he had such a calm demeanor.
I had never seen a human being change that much.”
So, Ruffalo decided to give it a try himself.
He said that the outcome of his practice was amazing.
He noted, “...everything changed.
My work started to change, my luck started to change.
The way the world looked to me changed.”
He found hope again after so many years of hardships.
6.
Bad Neighborhood
Mark Ruffalo’s life has been anything but easy.
When he and his brother were living near MacArthur Park, which was a crime-ridden area in Los
Angeles.
Mark said to Men’s Journal, “We’d go to the park in the morning and there would
be bodies strewn out in the grass.
Young women, totally strung out, sores all over their face, would knock on our door asking
for money or food.
It was so heavy.”
During his time living in this area, his neighbor showed up on his porch one day after an attempt
to prevent some people from breaking into a vehicle.
However, things didn’t pan out well for his neighbor; he ended up getting stabbed
twelve times.
Another unfortunate event happened at the bar where Ruffalo was working at the time.
A gang member came into the building and pulled out a firearm.
It just so happened that an off-duty police officer was working as a bouncer that night
and had his own weapon.
The first guy didn’t make it out alive.
5.
Best Friend & Chris Penn
There have been a lot of unfortunate situations that Mark has had to live through and push
past.
One of these incidents took place in 1994.
His best friend for many years, Michael, took his own life when he was twenty-six years
old.
Mark told Parade, “Michael was my dearest friend.
He was the only one I knew as sad as me who I could talk to.
When he [passed away], it rocked me out of a dark depression…
I realized… that [taking one’s own life] wasn’t an answer.
I understood the value of life.
Acting became my way of addressing it.”
In 2006, another friend of Ruffalo, Chris Penn, was lost due to an enlarged heart.
When he went to the funeral with Sean Penn, Chris’ older brother, a photographer was
interrupting the service.
Sean got into a fight with the guy taking pictures, and Ruffalo stepped in and took
the video card out of his camera.
He was investigated after the photographer filed a police report.
However, one of the family’s friends told the Daily News, “It was private property,
it’s a gated cemetery.
That guy didn’t belong there.
It’s disgusting that Sean couldn’t bury his brother in peace.”
4.
Livestream
Many of Mark’s hardships have been grave matters as we know.
However, some things have added a bit of comic relief to this star’s life.
In 2017, while attending the premiere of Thor: Ragnarok in Los Angeles, Ruffalo was on Instagram
live to let his fans see what he was doing at the event.
The problem is that he placed his cell phone in his pocket when the movie started and forgot
to turn off the live stream.
About two thousand five hundred people were watching, listening, and seeing how long it
would take Ruffalo to realize he had forgotten to shut it off.
He had it up for the first ten minutes of the new film, and the audio was allegedly
very clear.
3.
Wife & Children
Although many things in his life seem negative, others are very happy, such as his wife and
kids.
He and actress Sunrise have been married since 2000.
They met in 1998, and Ruffalo later stated, “I was living in a dump and didn’t even
have a driver’s license or a credit card.
She thought I was a mess, but she believed in me and kept encouraging me.”
They had their son, Keen, in 2001, their daughter, Bella, in 2005, and their youngest daughter,
Odette, in 2007.
Throughout all of their struggles, including Mark’s brain tumor, they’ve held their
relationship together and been there to support each other.
2.
His Brother
One of the most challenging things Mark Ruffalo has dealt with was the loss of his younger
brother, Scott.
He was a well-known hairdresser that worked in Beverly Hills and was discovered in his
condo with a gunshot wound to his head.
He was taken to the hospital but passed away a week later.
There were two people present at the time he was shot who claimed he had inflicted the
wound on himself during a substance-driven game of Russian roulette.
However, further investigation suggested that somebody else took his life.
To this day, the case remains unsolved.
The loss of Scott had a significant effect on Mark.
He told Men’s Journal, “You never get over it; you just get used to it.
You get calloused, a little bit harder maybe…
But take these [things] and turn them into something meaningful and worthy of the loss.
Make it count.”
Mark added that he was taking on specific film roles that reminded him of his brother,
like Paul in The Kids Are All Right.
He further said about his brother, “His charm, his spirit, his sense of humor, his
daring.
How great he was with women.
How he sort of devoured life…
He was a beautiful guy.”
1.
The Hulk
There are so many adverse events in Ruffalo’s life that he’s had to overcome.
But, he is also recognized for many wonderful things; so, let’s end this on a positive
note.
Mark is extremely well-known for playing one of the world’s favorite heroes, the Incredible
Hulk.
His acting ability has been praised a thousand times over for his work in the Marvel movies
and other films.
Mark has portrayed the green giant in The Avengers series as well as in Thor: Ragnarok
and received several awards and nominations for doing so.
We look forward to seeing what else this amazing man has in store!
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