Mark Ruffalo Quotes

#1. We are turning our grief into winnable actions.

Mark Ruffalo

#2. I didn't apply to any colleges - I lied to all my friends and told them I was going to UCSD, because all their parents would be like, 'Mark, where're you going to college?' and I'd just lie 'cause I felt it was unrealistic to be an actor.

Mark Ruffalo

#3. I was probably 8 years old; my mom let me stay up one night. She's like, 'You have to see this movie.' It was 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' and it was on TV, and it was a big deal. And I saw Marlon Brando, and I was like, 'Oh, my God.' That's where it started.

Mark Ruffalo

#4. I don't understand how people can take a gentle, loving life and treat it with such cruelty.

Mark Ruffalo

#5. I come from a traditional theater background.

Mark Ruffalo

#6. The fracking chemicals sit in open pits, get trucked around, or sent through pipelines that can burst. What do you think happens when frack chemicals and floods and storm swollen rivers mix?

Mark Ruffalo

#7. Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

Mark Ruffalo

#8. I became an actor so I didn't have to be myself.

Mark Ruffalo

#9. After the brain tumor happened, I realized I love acting, I've always loved it, I may never get a chance to do it again.

Mark Ruffalo

#10. Also, stick around. Don't lose your heart, just keep going, keep at it.

Mark Ruffalo

#11. I don't like this idea of Method. I come from that school, but what I was taught was that it's your imagination. You do your homework, and you use your imagination.

Mark Ruffalo

#12. You really can have your dreams and at the same time have a family. But it has to be a really deliberate practice.

Mark Ruffalo

#13. Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.

Mark Ruffalo

#14. I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming.

Mark Ruffalo

#15. I was bartending for a long time and going on auditions and was constantly being rebuffed.

Mark Ruffalo

#16. Sometimes, as an actor, you're so deeply immersed in a part that you lose control of it. If you're really lucky, a few times in your life it'll take you somewhere you never expected to go. It really blows the top off your understanding of your craft.

Mark Ruffalo

#17. I never used to get photographed and people asking for autographs. I don't mind the autographs, but the paparazzi I find weird. As an actor, you want to be able to regard the world instead of having it regard you.

Mark Ruffalo

#18. I ran to my marriage, I was happily ready to take on marriage.

Mark Ruffalo

#19. That was an interesting aspect: to go to war with the Church to fight for the very thing that the Church was meant to give to people

Mark Ruffalo

#20. Nothing anyone says in a bar is true.

Mark Ruffalo

#21. People are like, 'How does Julianne Moore look naked?' I don't know. She was pressed up against me the whole time. I couldn't look at her.

Mark Ruffalo

#22. I haven't had such an overwhelmingly positive response as I have from The Normal Heart directly to me. And it's a blessing. If this is it, if I have a piano dropped on me tomorrow, then I would go down thinking, You know what, I did okay as far as my career goes, because that's a gift. That's rare.

Mark Ruffalo

#23. I love 'The Sportswriter' by Richard Ford. Ford really captures for me the bittersweetness of the quietly suffering American man. It's stoic, sad, and really beautiful.

Mark Ruffalo

#24. As we're bombarded with the imagery that we are and now, post 9-11, it's hard not to get hardened by the world and the amount of violence that's allowed to be shown to kids these days.

Mark Ruffalo

#25. For the longest time, I was Scott Ruffalo's brother. I mean, he was the mayor of Beverly Hills. He was just so beloved there.

Mark Ruffalo

#26. I don't want to feel like I'm stuck doing one-stock performances.

Mark Ruffalo

#27. I didn't like the distance between my family and myself that I was experiencing from having to work all the time.

Mark Ruffalo

#28. It's a difficult undertaking. I've been married for four years and I see this movie as a cautionary tale about people who've gone deeply out of communication.

Mark Ruffalo

#29. Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

Mark Ruffalo

#30. Certainly, it's very easy to fall in love with cash. If you're going to make all your decisions based on cash, you're going to have a pretty naffy career.

Mark Ruffalo

#31. That's my secret Cap: I'm always angry.

Mark Ruffalo

#32. People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.

Mark Ruffalo

#33. Climate change is not going away. It will only get more extreme and more dangerous with time. There is no hiding from it. Yes, those living in poverty today will be hit first and the hardest, but we are all going to feel it and see it. We already are.

Mark Ruffalo

#34. Tom McCarthy said to me, 'Buddy, you got an Oscar nomination through that haircut! That's the real feat, man.'

Mark Ruffalo

#35. I always like having kid energy around. I think it's good for a movie, even when you're doing dramatic stuff.

Mark Ruffalo

#36. We're clearly coming to the end of the fossil fuel era. We have the technology to shift to renewable energy, we have the will of the people. The only thing that's keeping us back is the fossil fuel industry's hold on our political system. That's what we need to change.

Mark Ruffalo

#37. Actors, you kind of have these ebbs and flows. These moments where you're in your glory - where you're really cracking - and moments where you're not.

Mark Ruffalo

#38. The problem to me is violence. It's not cool to kill somebody or hurt people.

Mark Ruffalo

#39. Love conquers all - love is the grace that transcends any kind of injustice in the end.

Mark Ruffalo

#40. As an actor, you want to remain vulnerable. You don't want to always have all the answers and you want to be fine doing things in the moment with your fellow actors.

Mark Ruffalo

#41. People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.

Mark Ruffalo

#42. I enjoyed growing up part of my life in Virginia Beach. We had the ocean and the beach and a beautiful landscape. We were outdoors all the time and we played outside.

Mark Ruffalo

#43. I've just been more interested in doing film right now and I don't want to go away from my family for six months, which was what I would have had to have done if I did the play on Broadway.

Mark Ruffalo

#44. I'd never seen anyone do a rebuttal review to some of the reviews.

Mark Ruffalo

#45. My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice.

Mark Ruffalo

#46. As an actor, I started using dreams more, which is not mystical or anything like that. I just found that I've been using that as a tool to give me another point of view towards the work. It's often surprising but really helpful.

Mark Ruffalo

#47. My personal belief is that you carry your own water in a relationship. If you see a girl and you think she's hot, that's a very human reaction, but you don't go and tell your spouse that, you know? So in one way it's how you behave.

Mark Ruffalo

#48. I love acting with kids, cause they're great acting partners. They're totally present. Even when they're acting, they're still available and you can crack them up or something weird will happen and they'll go with it.

Mark Ruffalo

#49. A leader in America or anyone who says they truly care about this nation without taking some kind of action is either a liar or insane. In either case, they are unfit to lead.

Mark Ruffalo

#50. There's a level of trust that you have to have with somebody.

Mark Ruffalo

#51. It's been up, down, and sideways for me, man. I could become a huge star, or I could get cancer tomorrow.

Mark Ruffalo

#52. I like to think the movies that I've picked have something worthwhile to say. Something relevant.

Mark Ruffalo

#53. I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.

Mark Ruffalo

#54. I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher.

Mark Ruffalo

#55. Most great parts for guys in wheelchairs tend to go to actors who walk.

Mark Ruffalo

#56. Literally, I think I've quit acting three or four times, only for a few days. Maybe for a few weeks.

Mark Ruffalo

#57. I don't like to go to the gym very much if I can help it.

Mark Ruffalo

#58. The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them.

Mark Ruffalo

#59. I like extremes. I like to change things up and keep from getting complacent or stale.

Mark Ruffalo

#60. The laws of nature tell us there's a finite amount of any substance on the face of the earth, and at some point, that's going to run out. And if we're smart and we have some grace and we have some willingness about our destiny, then we will take ourselves into the renewable world.

Mark Ruffalo

#61. I don't have to be a leading man. I can be a character actor. That's really what interests me anyway.

Mark Ruffalo

#62. I live a bourgeois life.

Mark Ruffalo

#63. My mom was a hairdresser. My aunt was a hairdresser. My brother was a hairdresser. My sisters are hairdressers.

Mark Ruffalo

#64. I woke up one morning with the knowledge that I had a brain tumor. It wasn't so much that I dreamt I had a brain tumor; it was like someone just poured the knowledge into my head. It wasn't like an image; it was just like knowing. It was so weird, which is why I paid attention.

Mark Ruffalo

#65. By electrifying our lives, we reduce our energy costs by 39 percent, which is a huge savings in itself.

Mark Ruffalo

#66. Whoever controls your energy controls your destiny. 100 percent renewable energy is 100 percent American.

Mark Ruffalo

#67. Yeah, there's a tendency to get pigeonholed in Hollywood.

Mark Ruffalo

#68. I like to disappear in the parts I play.

Mark Ruffalo

#69. The idea of selling is a projection that people create about people that is more of a reflection of who they are than what is actually happening in front of them with the artist.

Mark Ruffalo

#70. I remember riding my bike down the boardwalk with nowhere to go and looking at the girls. It was really innocent.

Mark Ruffalo

#71. With indies, all they have is their script and it's very important to them. The characters are better drawn, the stories more precise and the experience greater than with studio films where sometimes they fill in the script as they're shooting.

Mark Ruffalo

#72. I did a series of these soft-core horror movies called 'Mirror Mirror.' I got killed in 'em all - and each time, I came back as a different character. They were all straight-to-video.

Mark Ruffalo

#73. It is a fact that our fresh water is becoming more scarce and that the new ways we are getting energy in America - fracking, mountaintop removal, cyclic steam extraction, deep-sea drilling - all pollute water, pollute the air, and pollute our soil and food.

Mark Ruffalo

#74. It's a point of pride that no one would treat me any differently because I'm an actor than if I was a gardener.

Mark Ruffalo

#75. I have two hammocks, one Mayan and one Guatemalan, both family size because I like to lie in them perpendicular. When I'm working on a character, I lie in them and daydream. They're the best tools for working that I have.

Mark Ruffalo

#76. The true value of somebody in this town is very hard to determine. It's all smoke and mirrors.

Mark Ruffalo

#77. When people sit across from people - gay, straight, whatever - and they talk, they find out that people they may have been demonizing for their lifetime aren't the demons we've expected them to be.

Mark Ruffalo

#78. I have a bag full of stuff that I give to people when they come to my house.

Mark Ruffalo

#79. Studio movies are looking more like independent movies and independent movies are looking more like studio movies, and I think cinema is better now because of it.

Mark Ruffalo

#80. The one great thing about a continuing collaboration is that they know you. And if you're really lucky, they really believe in you and think that your talent has some unending bounds to it.

Mark Ruffalo

#81. I want to do a western. Nobody does westerns anymore.

Mark Ruffalo

#82. I don't know, one out of every two marriages ends up in divorce so there's a lot of great people out there who people aren't happy with.

Mark Ruffalo

#83. When you're a young actor, and you're really fighting to have your place in the world - for me, anyway - it took a mental focus and energy and striving. It took a long time. And it was my whole life.

Mark Ruffalo

#84. It is a fact that, today, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution.

Mark Ruffalo

#85. I try to do the things that speak to me in one way or another, and sometimes I'm even drastic.

Mark Ruffalo

#86. I think of marriage as a garden. You have to tend to it. Respect it, take care of it, feed it. Make sure everyone is getting the right amount of, um, sunlight.

Mark Ruffalo

#87. I know what it's like to have these big multinational corporations invade your land and promise jobs and promise it's gonna be safe, and then you see the consequences.

Mark Ruffalo

#88. For some reason, my whole life has been, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.'

Mark Ruffalo

#89. Commercials that are geared towards kids. I think they should just, like, wipe them out.

Mark Ruffalo

#90. My belief about acting in one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave.

Mark Ruffalo

#91. When you have to fight for the things you love, you have to measure the value of those things in ways you may not in any other way.

Mark Ruffalo

#92. I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Mark Ruffalo

#93. I love acting and I love it in all its different manifestations.

Mark Ruffalo

#94. Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.

Mark Ruffalo

#95. Whatever we want to think about American business - work hard, tell the truth, have morality - it's a myth. There's a lot of graft.

Mark Ruffalo

#96. My surfboard is a 7-foot-3-inch spoon made by Rip Curl, kind of between a longboard and a shortboard. Surfing brings me into the here and now. It's a dance with the present.

Mark Ruffalo

#97. When you get to be a 45-year-old man, you start to realize: 'I know who I am, and I know who I'm not. I know my shortcomings, I know my strengths; maybe some of my shortcomings are my strengths.' You start to face yourself as you truly are.

Mark Ruffalo

#98. My dad sent me a text saying, 'You know who you should play? Columbo. That's your Academy Award.'

Mark Ruffalo

#99. The sculptor Frosty Myers and I met when we were bidding against each other at an auction. He's an eccentric, a liberal with a collection of rifles, and his stuff is big art. We share a love of tractors. I'm trading him one for a piece of art.

Mark Ruffalo

#100. No great undertaking ever looks like it's winnable. That only comes later and only if you are lucky and are willing to fight and have a group of folks around you that are willing to do the same thing, too.

Mark Ruffalo