Mark Ruffalo

Mark Ruffalo portrayed Bruce Banner in The Avengers and Iron Man 3, and will reprise his role in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Significant roles

 * Terry Prescott in You Can Count on Me (2000)
 * Zane Marinelli in The Beat (2000)
 * Yates in The Last Castle (2001)
 * Private Pappas in Windtalkers (2002)
 * Ted Stewart in View from the Top (2003)
 * Detective Malloy in In the Cut (2003)
 * Jack Linden in We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004)
 * Stan in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
 * Matt Flamhaff in 13 Going on 30 (2004)
 * Fanning in Collateral (2004)
 * David in Just Like Heaven (2005)
 * Adam Stanton in All the King's Men (2006)
 * Inspector David Toschi in Zodiac (2007)
 * Dwight Arno in Reservation Road (2007)
 * Chuck Aule in Shutter Island (2010)
 * Brad Sullivan in Date Night (2010)
 * John Zener in Second Coming (2010)

Quotes

 * "It's like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, a new actor gets a crack at it every year," "But really it's all heady stuff. It's exciting to be here. It's great to be a part of all this."
 * "It was very exciting — and I realized I had some pretty big shoes to fill. Those were my heroes up there! I was a comic book fan growing up. I loved The Hulk and The Avengers — it’s just strange to be entering that world as an actor. I never would have imagined that before."
 * “I had the same reaction my son had – ‘You, papa? The Hulk?’”
 * “What I like about it is they really want my character to be the everyman, which means they want me to gain 10 more pounds [instead].”
 * "I’m a friend of Ed’s, and yeah, that wasn’t a great way for all that to go down. But the way I see it is that Ed has bequeathed this part to me. I look at it as my generation’s Hamlet", "He’s a guy struggling with two sides of himself — the dark and the light — and everything he does in his life is filtered through issues of control. I grew up on the Bill Bixby TV series, which I thought was a really nuanced and real human way to look at The Hulk. I like that the part has those qualities."
 * "I probably wouldn't have done this movie in the past. But because of what Robert Downey Jr had done and where that genre has gone since then, I did it."
 * "I have never really been one to go for the cash. If my dad knew how much money I had turned in my lifetime he would kick me in the ass", "going for more than a job."
 * "I'm really excited. No one's ever played the Hulk exactly, they've always done CGI... They're going to do the Avatar stop-action, stop-motion capture. So I'll actually play the Hulk. That'll be fun."
 * "I really love the first TV version of it, the Bill Bixby one... I'm gonna shoot for that a little bit. He was an everyman in it. He's always on the run and trying to find love. It's really a sympathetic character, before he turns into the Hulk and f*cks everything up."
 * "I hope I don't bulge in anyone's face, that's all I have to say."
 * "They set up several pictures over a couple of years and possibly there will be a Hulk movie. There'll probably be a couple more Avengers too, which would be fun."
 * "The way I see it, Edward Norton has bequeathed this role to me. I reckon the part is my generation's Hamlet, and there's still some room for interpreting who The Hulk is. Growing up I'd rush home to watch my favourite show. You had the main character, played by Bill Bixby, and he had this calming quality to him. I watched it again recently, and it was so different from anything on TV at the time. You could really see the character struggling with the human aspect of what was happening."
 * "Looking ahead you're sort of going from making a small independent film and you do a lot of those, to making a very big film in The Avengers and you're going to be playing Bruce Banner. I was just wondering (because we have seen so many portrayals of Bruce Banner) how yours is going to be different?"
 * "Drawing on that a little bit, are you just trying to put all those guys out of your mind, Bill Bixby especially?"
 * "Well, with Joss Whedon directing, you kind of get the impression that it might be a bit more tongue in cheek. Perhaps you're going to play it completely straight?"
 * "It's cool, it's gonna be great. The script is a nice combination of funny and was very in Joss Whedon's wheelhouse. And I got to see the maquette of the Hulk yesterday in full scope and it's awesome. Just like me. We're going out of our way to... first of all, I'm the first actor to actually do it in motion capture as the Hulk. And so, all the features are mine, they're just really big."
 * Equal parts Hulk and Bruce Banner", "introduced in a really great way, and after that we have all the great Hulk stuff"
 * "They sort of set up several pictures at once, but a lot is riding on this first one."
 * “There will probably be a couple more Avengers movies, which would be fun to do. I don’t know if they will ever do another Hulk. How old is The Hulk meant to be? Six years from now I will be in my 50s!”
 * “I like where the genre has gone, especially with Robert Downey. There’s definitely a shift and when you look at people like Robert in Iron Man, he adds such humanity to it and I am interested in that."
 * “I’d like a thriller like a Shining, or Rosemary’s Baby, which has all of the hallmarks of great acting and great character cinema, but also it delivers on the thrill and the excitement."
 * “I see the comic book genre moving that way. I think it will be cool to try my hand at something like that eventually. They are giving movies to first-time directors who are making that kind of movie and I know I have something to offer.”"I think [it's gonna be] a lot of fun...we haven't seen all these guys together on the screen, I think it's gonna be pretty gutsy. And theres actually a lot of humor in it as well. And theres a lot of really good actors who are doing it. So hopefully it has a little bit of the spirit of what [Marvel] has been doing with Iron Man. And I have feeling people are really gonna have a good time," the actor continues,"it's the mother of all comic book movies. I've lost 15 pounds. I've been working a lot on the psychology of [Bruce Banner]. And hopefully I'll bring something different than what we've already seen"
 * "We have to get the script. We’ve been working on the script, which has been fun. I’ve lost 15 pounds. They don’t want me all ripped up, but they want me to be lean and mean. It’s about trying to get the psychology of somebody who knows, at any moment, they could literally tear the roof off of wherever they are and trying to bring something real to that and totally fantastic. I’ve been working with Joss Whedon on the script, with the rest of the cast, and we start rehearsals soon. Hopefully, we’ll have the mother of all comic book movies for you soon"
 * "I’m grateful that I get to do something like The Avengers," "I’m a lot happier when I’m more grateful than when I’m like ‘what the f**k man? I can make ten movies with their lunch budget, okay!’ There is not a lot of grace in that, and it just makes me miserable."
 * "I don’t know how else to do it. I have to find those places where it intersects with real life, I think," "So working on Bruce Banner walking around and thinking ‘I could tear the roof off of this like that.’ That does something to you. I’m trying to bring those elements to whatever I do."
 * "No one has asked me to shave my chest yet, thank God. They want this Hulk to be as close to me as possible. I'll be playing him in motion-capture, so this Hulk will just be a bigger avatar version of me. As they're modeling him, they're using many of my own features, down to my scars and wrinkles. He will have body hair, but I don't know to what extent."
 * "It's like being back in the forest as a 7-year-old, living in my imagination and creating this other world," "It's the absolute perfect marriage," "I walk in front of a monitor, and there I am as the Hulk," "I raise my right arm, he raises it, but he raises it as a 250-pound right arm, with all that weight and mass."
 * "No, no, no," "Look, I'm eating guacamole and ****ing potato chips, man, and having drinks with you." The bar is slowly filling, and as someone slides a buck into the jukebox to hear "American Pie," "You think Tom Cruise does this?"
 * "I play Bruce Banner. We're going back to the original. I will be the first actor to actually do the motion capture for the Hulk, and play the Hulk. It'll be like Avatar."
 * "They'll digitally overlay the Hulk body on my masculine physique. They won't have to do much CGI though, thank God."
 * "He's like the teammate none of them are sure they want on their team. He's a loose cannon. It's like, 'Just throw a grenade in the middle of the group and let's hope it turns out well!"
 * "I’m really excited, I loved working with Robert Downey [Jr.] and I loved kind of what they’ve done with the genre with Iron Man and Batman.”
 * "I just think it’s a very cool marriage of different talents."
 * "I think [he] is really going to do something very, very cool with this."
 * "We’ve been working on the script for months now,” the actor said. "I’ve been very active in that process."
 * "It really is the Bruce Banner that I want to play,” he added. “I think it will be an interesting twist on him. I don’t want to go too deep into that. I’m really looking forward to it. I hope it delivers on all fronts."
 * "I actually start the day Sympathy For Delicious opens."
 * "I’ve been working with [director/co-writer] Joss Whedon quite a bit on developing it, my portion of it. I’ll be working with Robert Downey, and I’m already doing the motion capture stuff. I’m excited."
 * "I’m the first actor to do both. It’s really cool. I was surprised by how well my theater training played into the motion capture thing, because it’s all your imagination. When he moves across the ground, I want him using all fours, using his arms as much as his legs to move from here to there. I’d like to capture some of the primitive aspect of him."
 * "Not so much hunched, but the low center of gravity, and the flailing of the arms sometimes."
 * "He looks just like me, but bloated and green. And big! He looks like me 40 pounds ago."
 * "It’s not a bad deal! The more of a difference there is between Mark and the Hulk, the happier everyone seems to be. I was like, ‘So do you want me to get ripped up?’ And they went, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no! Nice and trim. We want you nice and trim.’ They said, ‘We want you to look good with your shirt off, but we don’t want you strapped.’ I can live with that. And so can my wife."
 * "I was there for two hours and flew to LA back to NY. Talk about a carbon footprint," "I’m not used to that sort of thing. I run a small operation. I’m not used to getting a part and having it subjected to that scrutiny and debate. I like to come in the back door and surprise people. There’s so much onus on it. I trust Joss [Whedon]. We talked a lot and to Robert [Downey. Jr.] I trust that we are going to make it good. Robert sets the tone."
 * "You have all these disparate egos, superheroes in this and that, and they refuse to give up some of their positions in order to make a more perfect union and to join the team. That’s really what the whole movie is about: subjugating your own best interest momentarily to further that of the whole."
 * "This Hulk is mercurial. He's very unpredictable; he's nuanced. There's a sense of humor there; there's an ability to communicate. But he's bristly and he's incredibly dangerous, like a wild animal. His rage feels real; his reactions to things feel human."
 * " The Avengers isn’t the type film that I’ve done in the past or that I am usually invited to do. I was a little nervous about it because when Joss and I first met about the role there wasn’t a script. I thought a lot about Iron Man. I thought about what Robert Downey Jr. did with that part—he is one of my hero actors. I really loved what Robert did; he reinvented the genre. It made me feel like I could fit into that world with whatever it is I do. I had one meeting with Joss, who I liked instantly, so between him and Robert I was in. What appealed to both Joss and I about the character is that he would have a common man sort of feel to him and possess this world-weary charm. We also agreed he should have a sense of humor about his situation. Based on the last incarnation of The Incredible Hulk, there was the promise that Banner may actually have a little control over the Behemoth. We wanted him to be fun and interesting as Banner and awesome as Hulk."
 * "I am in a scruffy linen suit that was bought directly out of a thrift store and I am looking around the room at these impeccable human specimens feeling like a tool and thinking, ‘What am I doing here?' I felt a strange jealousy as I was looking at their cool outfits and strapping bodies. I was purposely told not to put on muscle for the role, so I was the pipsqueak. I longed to have my cool outfit and be part of the team and that is exactly how Bruce Banner is feeling as well. I was nervous because I had a lot of long scientific dialogue. I thought I knew the scene pretty well, but standing next to Sam Jackson and all of the other actors in the cast for the first time, I just kind of fell apart for the first few takes. Thank goodness Sam made a good joke about it, which put me at ease and I was fine after that."
 * "In a lot of the other versions of the character, The Hulk grew in size drastically, but in The Avengers he is always going to be about eight and a half feet tall. He gets stronger as he gets angrier, but he doesn’t really grow much taller. When I found out there was a whole new arena of technology that would allow an actor to play what has always been a CGI character, I thought it could be something cool to try my hand at. It’s a game changer for The Hulk because it’s hard to capture real anger in a CGI character. Anger is something that’s deep and primordial. There are so many subtleties and variations to it, so this idea of bringing a darker, more humanistic Hulk was really exciting and compelling."
 * "There are many different steps in creating this version of The Hulk. It was interesting to me how relatable it is to theater, which is the oldest form of acting. As a theater actor you walk onto a black box and there is nothing to live off of, so you really have to rely on your imagination and you have to put things out there that aren’t there. Theater was my training as an actor and when they put me in this tiny little pod with thousands of cameras and lights all around and I could only move my head, I was able to use my imagination to put myself in the circumstance of fighting Thor or any other being."
 * "Every movement you make you see The Hulk making the same movement in the monitor, so the image starts to tell you how the character stands and behaves. You also see that the body can only move certain ways, so you’re creating the character based on the physical presence that’s in front of you, which was really exciting and challenging. I spent several days there and we went through fights, like Hulk against Thor, and I would simulate the fight with one of ILM’s animators for three hours. They took all the information of our movements, put it into a computer and that becomes the basis for The Hulk. It’s very complex, methodical, and in a lot of ways, a really nascent technology. It’s a creature, but it also feels human and I’m thrilled by it. My experience in a lot of these types of films is that you feel like you’re watching two movies—the CGI movie and the human portion. But now we’re free as actors through this technology and audiences can stay connected and track the character for the entire film."
 * "I think Banner's aging and living with this thing since -- now it's been two years since his last "one." We're kind of going for this world weariness of accepting -- trying to get to the point where he can live with it, and maybe master it. Come to peace with it. And so there's this kind of nice ironic wryness to Banner. He's not sulking and miserable, you know. I think that's sort of a throwback -- we had talked about it being a throwback to Bill Bixby, which was the Banner that I grew up on basically. He had kind of a charm about him, and this world weariness. He was on the run, but he was still able to flirt sometimes and smile sometimes, and occasionally he'd crack a joke."
 * "He Does. As of this moment, I am. But you never know what they're going to do. They might watch it and go, "Oh my god!" Yeah, he's a smart Hulk. He hasn't graduated to that yet, but hopefully he might be on the way to that. I don't know where it's gonna go after this, but there's definitely -- I feel like we're trying to open the door to integration of the two. I liken it [to] the guy who tried to break a bucking Bronco. He has some tiny little semblance of control of it, but then again it's completely out of control. That's what the last one left off, I felt like."
 * "Why not! It was the one character -- you know, I was a comic book fan when I was a kid and I always loved the Hulk. When The Incredible Hulk, that show, came on, I would not miss that. And so if I was going to find myself in that world, this would be the guy that I would be most interested in doing. To make a very short answer long: Yeah, I'd love to have him do his own movie."
 * "We're shooting a scene tonight. I'm not sure exactly where it's gonna go. All I know is that someone came in with the costume and said, 'Here's some wardrobe. We don't know where you're going to be or what you're doing.'"
 * "The producers have sort of asked me about it [another Hulk solo movie] in some drunken nights in our European press tour, where I would like to see a new movie go."
 * "A lot of folks have been asking about the next Hulk. The next time you see my Hulk it will be in the Avengers 2. No plans for stand alone."
 * "I am not giving up on another stand alone HULK. But it’s not in the works right now. One never knows what the future will bring."
 * "Just to be totally clear. I did not say there was not going to ever be a stand alone Hulk film. I said there wasn’t one in the works now."
 * "It was literally, they were about to wrap the movie and I saw Robert at the Academy Awards and he had this idea. Marvel had had an idea but then they scraped it and I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Then I saw Robert and he said, 'What do you think about coming and doing a day?' I said, 'Are you kidding me? Bang, lets do it!' We sort of spitballed that scene, then I came in and we shot for a couple of hours and laughed. I haven’t seen it yet but people seem to like it."
 * "[if he'll be present in Avengers 2] I don’t know, maybe, maybe not...They haven’t talked about it with me... I think so. I'd be really sad if they did [recast me]. I can't imagine that. That would be bad. "That would not be good," as Joss Whedon would say. I don't foresee not coming back as The Hulk.""
 * "[if other actors will or won't come back for Avengers 2] I haven't caught wind of any of that. I was surprised to hear it, because I don't even think anyone's really started negotiating yet. As far as I know everyone is back. But sometimes actors are the last people to know what's going on."
 * "As artists we have an ability to reach a lot of people in a deep way, and we have a responsibility. What we have to do as storytellers is to take science and make it relatable. I think we have to tell the story of the positive & what we're going to try to do. Give them alternatives but don't make it a polemic. I think that's the way to go, and it's a trend that'll start to develop: as a culture, when we latch onto a fad, we're actually working something out in the creative subconscious. The fact that all these doomsday and end-of-times movies are coming out is because we're actually working that out in the culture. I'm in The Avengers, but if you took my screentime it would come to about ten minutes, along with the 12 other people I'm sharing the screen with, so my input's kind of limited on that. But if we get to a standalone Hulk movie, I'll have a much better chance to do that. I'm just learning now how to find my voice and bring it into the studio world."
 * "I would say that it's better, it's cooler, it's more awesomer. It's a little bit darker, but also really has Joss Whedon's incredibly, witty and sly sense of humor. Bruce Banner gets to do such great stuff!"
 * "My role's even bigger than last time, and it's more complex and it has more layers and a bit more arc. Not only that, but it seems that the motion capture process is becoming a whole lot more agreeable second time around. I'm really tripping on the technology of this motion-capture stuff… now I just completely embrace it and see it as this other exciting place we can go as performers."
 * "I know the team, I have come to really enjoy these people and know them, and I'm so happy to see them have so much success. And I really love Joss Whedon. I really love working with him. He always gives me something that's a surprise to me. And so, yeah, it's been really nice coming back. It's also nerve-wracking because it did so well and people expect so much. You're balancing a lot in it, there's a lot of characters and a lot of story, and you're trying to figure out your work inside of it."
 * "It has been great, I love him [Andy Serkis]. We met on 13 Going on 30, and he's created a place that's so actor-friendly and puts the actor front and centre of that technology, and has demystified it, and made it a comfortable place - although we may never get comfortable in those leotards. The technology is actually at a place where it's almost in real time for the most part so it's a lot like digital pupperty."
 * "I'm the green sheep of the Marvel family. But I think they're starting to catch on - I think all of us are starting to catch on- that you can't hurt a movie by doing that stuff. You really can't. It just makes people buy into it more. It makes them part of it, they're invested in it. It's not that precious for God's sake."
 * "Let me put it to you this way: there is a Hulk surprise that is equally delightful as when he smashed the bejesus out of Loki."
 * "Well a typical day always begins in the make up chair. Where fortification's taken which constitutes a little nap and face message. Afterwards we are a coaxed into our costumes and out of our trailers, which is usually a hardship for the coaxer. Then we assemble on set and do a rehearsal which at some point or another ends up in Thor getting completely fed up with us mortals. Then we repeat that many times over the course of the day interspersed with camera moves, pee breaks, coffee, lunch, and make up."
 * "There's lots of "Science Bros." stuff. There's some cool Science Bros stuff... very cool stuff. I think they are, for the first time, entertaining the idea of it. When we did The Avengers it was basically 'No!', and now there is some consideration for it. But there's still nothing definitive, not even a skeletal version of what it would be. I look forward to going down that road, if we could crack that nut."