It’s hard not to be green with envy when you consider just how awesome Mark Ruffalo is.
After all, he played a certain green character, The Hulk, for several years and got to rub elbows with some of the best (read: hottest) Marvel Avengers.
He’s also an Oscar-nominated actor who is incredibly humble. Basically, it’s hard not to love him, and it will be even more so after you read these 10+ facts.
1. Robert Downey Jr. encouraged him to become The Hulk.
Robert is basically the unofficial dad of the Marvel Universe.
He got Chris Evans to take the part of Captain America and even convinced Mark to become the Hulk.
Ruffalo told Jimmy Fallon on *The Tonight Show*:
“I got a call from Downey, it must’ve made it to him that I was hemming and hawing, and he just simply said, ‘Ruffalo, let’s go. We got this,'” he said .
2. He used to be a surfer dude.
While he was born in Wisconsin to an Italian-American family, he moved to San Diego, California, as an early adult.
It was here that he surfed (and got stoned a lot) before he eventually got into drama school.
3. He’s quit acting before.
He once auditioned 800 times without booking a single role, he told Interview Magazine .
Before he landed You Can Count on Me , the film that launched his career, he had quit acting and moved back home to work for his dad as a painter.
4. He was once diagnosed with a brain tumour.
This happened while he was filming 2001’s The Last Castle .
While it turned out to be benign , he still had to have surgery to remove it. This caused deafness in one ear and the left side of his face to be paralyzed for a year.
5. He’s a huge advocate for certain social issues.
This includes advocating for abortion rights and anti-fracking.
In 2016, he helped lead the fight against natural gas fracking in his home state. He has also endorsed leftist Bernie Sanders for president twice.
His friends and co-stars admire Mark for using his platform for good.
“Mark is really the king of putting his money where his mouth is,” Don Cheadle, one of Mark’s Avengers co-stars, told Variety .
“He uses his platform to the best of his ability to bring attention to and shine a light on issues that really need to be in the forefront of people’s attention.”
6. He once played two characters on one show.
The actor pulled a Lindsay Lohan by playing twins on the HBO series, I Know This Much Is True .
He played Thomas, a schizophrenic who lands himself in an institution, and Dominic, the caregiver who fights to get his brother out of there.
7. His younger brother, Scott, was a murder victim.
The actor has truly been through a lot in his life.
In December 2008, Scott was shot dead in his Beverly Hills apartment. The murder is still unsolved to this day, sadly.
This tragic experience taught the actor a lot about himself.
“I don’t know what I’d be without those experiences,” Ruffalo told The Independant .
“Something like that happening or any kind of tragedy just opens the world in a different… you realise human beings’ fallibility.”
8. He’s incredibly humble.
While a lot of celebrities choose to live in mansions in Hollywood, the Marvel actor took a different path for his at-home life.
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He once resided in a small city called Callicoon with his wife, Sunrise Coigney, and their three kids.
“It’s pretty much a blue-collar community, a farming community,” he told *OK Magazine*.
“I wanted my children to have that experience.”
He also likes the fact that he’s treated like everyone else in Callicoon — “no favoritism or anything like that,” he said.
9. He helped make HBO’s *I Know This Much Is True* series happen.
After falling in love with the book by Willy Lamb, he set up a meeting with the author as soon as the book rights were available.
“I told him, ‘I don’t think it’s a movie, and that’s why you’ve had such a hard time getting it made,’” Ruffalo recalled to Variety .
He pitched the author the idea of turning the book into a limited series, which Ruffalo would create.
“We shook hands and made the deal right there,” recalls Ruffalo. “There were no agents.”
10. He studied drama at the Stella Adler Institute.
He studied at the school in the early ’90s with fellow famous classmates, such as Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek.
After graduating, he struggled to get his big break as he was only doing small plays.
11. He once took a two-year break from acting.
The rat race of trying to make it as an actor took a lot out on the actor.
So once he was married and had kids, he and his wife decided to sell everything in L.A. and move out to the country.
“During this two-year break I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he told Julia Roberts for Interview Magazine.
He was considering getting into directing (and did direct one film), but then got a call about making The Normal Heart with TV producer, Ryan Murphy.
12. He wasn’t originally The Hulk.
That was Edward Norton, who got fired for being too controlling on set.
His firing led to a huge battle against Marvel, as he called them “mean-spirited, unprofessional, disingenuous, and clearly defamatory.”
This led Ruffalo to feel a bit wary about taking over the character.
“I was just kinda’ like, ‘Is this okay?’” Ruffalo explained in an interview with The Marvelists podcast. “’And he was all like, ‘Man, all’s fair in love and war.’”
