Mark Ruffalo

Mark Alan Ruffalo (born November 22, 1967) is an American actor.

Mark Alan Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

His mother, Marie Rose (Hébert), is a hairdresser and stylist, while his father, Frank Lawrence Ruffalo Jr., worked as a construction painter.

He has two sisters, Tanya Marie (died 2023) and Nicole, and a brother, Scott (died 2008).

His father is of Italian descent, from Girifalco, Calabria, and his mother is of French Canadian and Italian ancestry.

. His father was a Bahai, while his mother was Christian.

“I grew up in a household that had three religions in it, (born-again) Christianity, Catholicism and Bahai’ism, so there were different viewpoints and a lot of debate about that, and I immediately began to understand that all these people that I loved very much had very strong feelings about faith, but all of them were valid to me.

I felt that none of them, my grandmother, my father or my mother, was better or worse than the other.”

Ruffalo attended both Catholic and progressive schools throughout his education.

Ruffalo has described himself as having been a "happy kid", although he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD as a child and a young adult.

Ruffalo spent his teen years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where his father worked.

He competed in wrestling in junior high and high school in Wisconsin and Virginia.

Ruffalo graduated from First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach in 1985, where he acted for the Patriot Playhouse.

He moved with his family to San Diego, California and later to Los Angeles, where he took classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory and co-founded the Orpheus Theatre Company.

With the theater company, he wrote, directed, and starred in a number of plays.

He also spent close to a decade working as a bartender.

He made his screen debut in an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse (1989), followed by minor film roles.

He began acting in the early 1990s and first gained recognition for his work in Kenneth Lonergan's play This Is Our Youth (1996) and drama film You Can Count on Me (2000).

Ruffalo played 'Vinnie Webber', a minor character in Series 1 Episode 9 of Due South, first broadcast in Canada in 1994.

During this time he made his film debut in the horror film Mirror, Mirror II: Raven Dance (1994) followed by Mirror, Mirror III: The Voyeur (1995).

He starred as Warren Straub in the original cast of the Kenneth Lonergan play This Is Our Youth (1996) off-Broadway.

Lonergan was a founding member of Naked Angels, a theater company that Ruffalo also belonged to.

Ruffalo acted opposite Josh Hamilton and Missy Yager.

Ruffalo had minor roles in films including The Dentist (1996), the low-key crime comedy Safe Men (1998), and Ang Lee's Civil War western Ride with the Devil (1999).

Ruffalo reunited with Kenneth Lonergan acting in his film You Can Count on Me (2000).

Ruffalo portrayed Laura Linney's character's brother.

The film received critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations.

He received favorable reviews for his performance in this film, often earning comparisons to the young Marlon Brando, and won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Montreal World Film Festival.

In the mid-2000s, Ruffalo appeared as a romantic lead in numerous romantic comedies starting with View From the Top (2003) starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

His next role was in 2001 in Rod Lurie's The Last Castle playing a bookie in a military prison alongside Robert Redford.

It led to other supporting roles, including the films XX/XY (2002), Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me, John Woo's Windtalkers (2003), Jane Campion's In the Cut (2003) and We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004).

He went on to star in the romantic comedies 13 Going on 30 (2004), Just like Heaven (2005) and the thrillers In the Cut (2003), Zodiac (2007), and Shutter Island (2010).

He then starred opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004) which has since become a cult classic.

That same year he also acted in Michel Gondry's romantic fantasy drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) starring Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey.

In the film Ruffalo plays a supporting role as Stan who is a technician in charge of erasing people's memories of each other.

That same year he acted opposite Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise as a narcotics detective in Michael Mann's crime thriller Collateral (2004).

He received a Tony Award nomination for his supporting role in the Broadway revival of Awake and Sing! in 2006.

Ruffalo gained nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a sperm-donor in the comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right (2010), Dave Schultz in the biopic Foxcatcher (2014), Michael Rezendes in the drama Spotlight (2015), and a debauched lawyer in the science fantasy Poor Things (2023).

Ruffalo gained international recognition for playing Bruce Banner / Hulk since 2012 in the superhero franchise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

He won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor in a TV Movie for playing a gay writer and activist in the television drama film The Normal Heart (2015), and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his dual role as identical twins in the miniseries I Know This Much Is True (2020).