Mark Ruffalo in 2001, for You Can Count on Me
“I had a very difficult time. I actually quit at least 4 or 5 times. I couldn’t get a job. I had done 30 plays in Los Angeles and I couldn’t get a job. I was getting little jobs here and there, but no one was really recognising what I thought I had. I thought, ‘I’ve done all this work, why isn’t it paying off?’ That really starts to hurt your self-image; and I already had a questionable self-image coming into the game. I wasn’t like the best candidate to become an actor. I was really insecure and I didn’t particularly like myself very much.”
What did your mother say to make you not give up? It’s down to her, I believe, that you carried on?
She’d never told me to do anything before and she said, ‘I’ve let you do everything. I’ve tried to let you make all your own choices in your life but goddamit, Mark, I’m not going to let you do it.’ I wanted to go back to Wisconsin and work with my father doing construction painting. She said, ‘Goddamit, I won’t let you do it. If you give up, you’ll never forgive yourself.’ She called my dad and she basically said she’d never talk to him again if he let me come up there. It was a pretty powerful moment for me. I woke up.
Your career really started to take off when you did ‘This is our Youth’, with Kenneth Lonergan, in New York.
Yes. That period of time was like Cinderella. It was very exciting because I had come from Los Angeles theatre, and I went to New York to do a play and nobody knew who the hell I was. After our opening night we’re standing in a restaurant, having a party, and someone comes running in around 12:15, with the New York Times, and yells, ‘It’s a hit! It’s a hit!’ That was a dream!”
Did you talk to John Woo about violence? I have interviewed him a few times and on each occasion he told me how much he hates violence.
I don’t know if anyone knows this about John but his dream is to make a musical. It’s his dream. He just happens to be a fantastic choreographer and really the only way to do it if you’re not doing it with dance is to do it with action. That’s what he does, so beautifully. The way he moves the camera with the actors on Windtalkers, it’s like a huge musical production, very choreographed. He’s the most gentle, soulful, non-violent man I think I’ve ever met, yet he makes these incredibly violent films.”