Mark Ruffalo’s Humanity Brings a Special Kind of Movie Magic to Santa Barbara 

There’s a core of humanity and likeability that shines through everything that Mark Ruffalo does — both onscreen and off, whether he’s hulking out to save the world or testifying on Capitol Hill for the same reason — which is probably why the four-time Academy Award nominee has remained one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors throughout his long career. That career is at a high point right now, with his hilarious role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things earning him both an Oscar nom, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and last night’s American Riviera Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. 

Though it was Super Bowl Sunday (and an overtime game at that), fans flocked to the Arlington Theatre for the sold out event and — unlike 49ers fans — no one left disappointed. 

“Mark Ruffalo is an incredible leading man and character actor both,” said interviewer Anne Thompson in her introduction. Through the decades he has always embraced independent films as well as big budget blockbusters, and Thompson capably led us on a journey through some Ruffalo film highlights that reflect both ends of that spectrum. 

Ruffalo, who got his start doing theater and spoke a bit about his parents being supportive but wary of his early efforts, which included a number of odd jobs and “an illustrious bartending career for eight years.” As a theater thespian, he said, “we did 30 plays in 12 years living in Los Angeles — at a 60-seat theater [trying and failing to get casting directors to come: ‘they will never come to plays’]. That’s where I am comfortable. But I love it all. I’m an acting cockroach. I love it all.”

Ruffalo laughed, “I would have been happy just paying my way being an actor at that point.” He did about 11 small roles in small films before getting his first big film part in You Can Count on Me from film director, playwright, and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan.

“Kenny’s writing is so specific and beautiful. And there’s such a powerful inner life happening with those characters [referring to a scene from You Can Count on Me, in which he and Laura Linney play siblings with a complicated relationship]. What I learned was to be present and to act moment to moment. To go through the process of thinking it and feeling it and letting it come out.”

“When I did You Can Count on Me everything kind of exploded,” said Ruffalo. Thompson paired an intense clip from that film with a powerful scene opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac, a David Fincher film which Saturday night’s honoree, Robert Downey Jr., also appeared in and spoke about.

Asked about how he selects his roles, Ruffalo said, “I think I’ve been uncertain in taking just about every role. My team calls me Mark Wafflelo.”

Waffling or not, seeing so many of his films up on screen is a testament to his many good choices. Additional things they shared pieces of were The Brothers Bloom with Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz; The Kids Are All Right, with Annette Bening (who will be honored on Friday night by SBIFF) and Julianne Moore; and The Avengers, where he replaced Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner / Hulk in the sixth installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ruffalo has gone on to play the role ten times and still has more in the works.

“The trick with acting is to make everything seem like you’re improvising,” said Ruffalo. “I love to act and even when it’s bad, I’m still having a good time.”

They showed a small, affecting clip from his role as Cam, a father of two with bipolar disorder in the independent comedy film Infinitely Polar Bear. “I’ve been very lucky to have some parts that I played who were real people,” said Ruffalo. “I got to understand them and I’ve been honored to bring them to life. Cam was one of them. I love that movie.”

The biopic Foxcatcher, where he played Olympic champion freestyle wrestler Dave Schultz opposite Channing Tatum, was also discussed, as was his role as the real life Boston Globe journalist Michael Rezendes — who helped break the story on the widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Catholic priests — in Spotlight.

“It changed the world,” said Ruffalo of the 2003 story, and of the 2015 film he said, “That movie changed things for the better. … And that’s the power of cinema. That’s the beauty of it.”

Another powerful real life story that Ruffalo performed in and helped bring to the screen as producer was Dark Waters, a 2019 film about chemical contamination based on the lawyer who became DuPont’s worst nightmare. “It’s people like this that change the world,” said Ruffalo. “They sent it to me and they said, ‘you should be making this,’ and I learned about it and I said, ‘I should be making this.’”

In a discussion that could easily have covered another 20 some-odd films, the clips ended with Ruffalo’s performance in Poor Things, about which he said of his over-the-top character, “He’s horrible. I’ve never done anything like this.” 

Thompson observed, “You somehow manage to make us feel sorry for this dissipated asshole.” 

“Maybe it’s that we see him for the nothing that he really is and we feel some sympathy for him,” said Ruffalo. 

His co-star and one of the producers on Poor Things, Emma Stone, certainly felt some sympathy for him and a great deal of affection for the man who plays him. She presented the American Riviera Award to Ruffalo with a lovely tribute: “I knew I’d do anything to be in the presence of this man and work with him. And thankfully when Poor Things came to life I got my chance. The character of Duncan Wedderburn in Poor Things is debaucherous, lecherous, and treacherous, and watching him play this character was honestly the most fun I’ve ever had on a set. 

“In becoming Duncan, Mark got to be awful; he got to swear and philander and let his freak flag fly. And yet he also somehow imbued Duncan with a sparkle of … lovability that Duncan quite honestly did not serve. Duncan is an archetype of a narcissist and somehow Mark made him adorable as only he could.”

That humane core that comes through in Ruffalo’s performances again and again, also came through with his acceptance speech. Not only was he incredibly gracious talking about his family, his professional team, and working with Stone as well as the excellent interviewer Thompson, he also used his platform to acknowledge that we were on the ancestral lands of the Chumash — “20,000 native American people once lived here and I want to thank them for hosting us in spirit tonight” — and “to talk about the 1.9 million people on the people on the border of Egypt and why it’s happening is equally horrible for the people of Israel.” 

He stated, “We can’t bomb our way into peace, and we can’t act like what’s happening isn’t happening. It just doesn’t do us service. It’s a scary time. I want to state that  because so few people are right now. … These things that aren’t being talked about enough.”

Ruffalo also spoke of being at an age where many of the people he knows are no longer with us. “I’m just grateful that I know now that life is just this beautiful fleeting gift and that this world is just full of untold suffering and it’s just by feeling the value of our own lives, it actually just gives us greater capacity for feeling the value of other people’s lives. I mean it’s goddamn hard to be a human being. It is. It’s just hard. We’re here to value each other and we’re here to celebrate the love that we universally share and the chance to tell the stories and the excitement of our common humanity and vulnerability.”