Mark Alan Ruffalo (; born November 22, 1967) is an American actor and producer who began his career in the late 1980s 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). He went on to star in the romantic comedies 13 Going on 30 (2004) and Just like Heaven (2005), and the thrillers In the Cut (2003), Zodiac (2007), and Shutter Island (2010). He received a Tony Award nomination for his supporting role in the Broadway revival of Awake and Sing! in 2006. Ruffalo has gained international recognition for playing Bruce Banner / Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with the film The Avengers (2012).
Ruffalo earned a record-tying four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a sperm donor in The Kids Are All Right (2010), Dave Schultz in Foxcatcher (2014), Michael Rezendes in Spotlight (2015), and a debauched lawyer in Poor Things (2023). He won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for playing a gay activist in the television drama film The Normal Heart (2015), and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor for his dual role as identical twins in the miniseries I Know This Much Is True (2020).
Ruffalo was born on November 22, 1967, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His mother, Marie Rose (née Hébert), is a hairdresser and stylist, while his father, Frank Lawrence Ruffalo Jr., worked as a construction painter. He has two sisters, Tanya Marie, who died in 2023, and Nicole, and a brother, Scott, who died in 2008. His father is of Italian descent, from Girifalco, Calabria, and his mother is of French Canadian and Italian ancestry. His father was a Baháʼí, while his mother was Christian:
I grew up in a household that had three religions in it, (born-again) Christianity, Catholicism and Baháʼísm, 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 1986, 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 Academy 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.
1989–2002: Early film roles and theatre
Ruffalo made his screen debut in an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse (1989), followed by minor film roles. 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). He 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. 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). Ruffalo later described his in role in The Last Castle as "seminal to me".
In the mid-2000s, Ruffalo appeared as a romantic lead in numerous romantic comedies starting with View from the Top (2003) starring Gwyneth Paltrow. 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). Todd McCarthy of Variety praised Ruffalo: "[He] provides an extra dimension of intelligence to what initially looks like a stock cop role." He starred in Just Like Heaven (2005) with Reese Witherspoon which was adapted from the French novel by Marc Levy entitled If Only It Were True. That same year, he acted in the Rob Reiner romantic comedy Rumor Has It (2005) starring Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, and Shirley MacLaine.
2006–2011: Expansion into Broadway, direction, and dramatic roles
In 2006, Ruffalo starred in the political drama remake All the King's Men acting opposite Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Anthony Hopkins. The film was adapted by Steven Zaillian based on the Robert Penn Warren 1946 novel of the same name. Also in 2006, he made his Broadway debut starring as Moe Axelrod in Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! at the Belasco Theatre in New York. Ruffalo acted alongside Lauren Ambrose, Pablo Schreiber, and Zoe Wanamaker. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wrote of his performance, "Nobody slings it with more panache than Mark Ruffalo, the soulful movie and stage actor making his Broadway debut here." David Rooney of Variety wrote: "The most arresting work onstage comes from Ruffalo, channeling prickly charm into a proud man who uses glib aggression to camouflage his frustration. Ruffalo's scenes with Ambrose are the drama's most electric moments." The role earned him a nomination for Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
In March 2007, Ruffalo appeared in David Fincher's crime thriller Zodiac as SFPD homicide inspector Dave Toschi, who ran the investigation to find and apprehend the Zodiac killer from 1969 through most of the 1970s. He acted opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. Critic Roger Ebert described Ruffalo's performance by writing that "Ruffalo plays him not as a hotshot but as a dogged officer who does things by the book because he believes in the book". Toschi was role model for the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. That same year, Ruffalo played divorced lawyer Dwight Arno, who accidentally kills a child and speeds away, in Terry George's film Reservation Road, based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz.
In 2008, Ruffalo starred as a con man in The Brothers Bloom with Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz and co-starred with Julianne Moore in Blindness. 2008 also saw Ruffalo in Brian Goodman's What Doesn't Kill You with Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peet, which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2009, he played a brief role in the film Where the Wild Things Are as Max's mother's boyfriend. Ruffalo directed a number of plays during his time at the Orpheus Theatre Company, and made his feature film directorial debut with 2010 indie film Sympathy for Delicious starring himself, Juliette Lewis, and Laura Linney, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. In March 2010, Ruffalo signed with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA); in June 2010, he signed on with the United Talent Agency (UTA).