Mark Ruffalo: Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton (2007-03-19)

[Music] [Music] tonight's guest has become one of the most highly regarded actors of his generation in an array of roles and films as varied as you can count on me for which he received an independent spirit award nomination and won the montreal film festival best actor award the last castle windtalkers in the cut we don't live here anymore eternal sunshine of the spotless mind 13 going on 30. collateral just like heaven all the king's men and zodiac the actors studio is proud to welcome mark ruffalo let's improvise [Laughter] that was an improv how'd i do you reacted to begin as always at the beginning where were you born mark a little industrial town in wisconsin uh named kenosha is the name ruffalo italian yes it is i am a second generation italian american what would it be pronounced in italian ruffalo ruth yes you went to grade school in kenosha yes i went to a hippie montessori uh preschool really which was in the middle of you know this industrial town which was a complete anomaly and uh we were throwing on the pottery wheel and you know making god's eyes and it was it was you know it was a pretty you know progressive school for this place there was a huge um baha'i uh my father was a baha'i it's an eastern religion and there was a big community of baha'is there and there they were they were kind of the hippies of kenosha wisconsin and so one of these baha'i followers started this beautiful nursery school which is one of my greatest memories and they exalted the artists they all consider themselves artists the teachers that was my first and one of my best experiences in school and the next one wasn't until 12th grade where did 12th grade occur virginia beach virginia what took you there my dad sort of started another career and he just upped the family and we moved to a beach community and we were 10 years behind everyone else in our fashion the way we spoke it is an unusual place isn't it it has the longest beaches in america it's a gorgeous place it has beautiful beaches uh beautiful sea uh forests parks state parks right along the ocean we had sailboats and surfing and motorcycles running from the police wait a minute why'd you run from the police we used to take our motorcycles into the state park and terrorize in the state park on our motorcycles and uh and a lot of times we were being chased by the police for doing it were you a skateboarder i was a skateboarder we uh we were running from the police for stealing wood to build ramps wait a minute you escaped also on your skateboard no at that point it was on foot with the with the four by eight i got it three quarter inch piece of plywood on your back what is your father's name frank lawrence ruffalo jr and your mother's name marie rose ruffalo did your mother work uh yes my mother was a hair stylist uh and uh during the 70s how many siblings did you have i have a brother and two sisters scott nicole and tanya and weren't there other hairstylists in your family all of my family why my brother is a hair stylist at giuseppe franco in beverly hills right now he's he's i'm known there as scott ruffalo's brother gotcha my sister uh tanya and nicole are both hair stylists were you and your siblings clothes very close we you know moving around the way we did uh made us very tight when you were in virginia beach isn't there a community called ghent does that strike up them in your nose no is that where i lost my virginity no no is there a story connected with it worth telling capable of being told my wife i lost my virginity on the first hole of the golf course of the virginia beach golf course and a half years and this is a first weren't there some famous hampton roads people pat robertson came from there wanda sykes montel williams i i received jesus christ by uh by uh jerry faldwell who was coming through there on one of his uh world tours my in my grandmother forced me to become a born-again christian on my eighth birthday i went up there to receive jesus and all the other kids were falling down next to me and the rival in the hall without being hit struck down by the holy spirit and he got to me and i didn't feel anything and um that i think and then i fell on the ground just just so i wouldn't be left out right and then that was the beginning of my acting career thank god praise the lord praise the lord what high school did you go to i went to the first colonial high school in virginia beach how did you do academically in school i was horrible i was basically a c student occasionally d i wasn't very good in algebra i had to do it several times but i was a wrestler and i had to make good grades to wrestle and i loved wrestling and so i wanted to i wanted to keep doing it and you know they were very helpful to me because i was on the wrestling team and i was an asset to first colonial you said i'm still taking it to the mat still grappling with demons but it's a kind of metaphysical wrestling now true yes what demons insecurity doubt um fear yeah um pride uh success you know the the demons have sort of changed uh but they they they go stronger as you as you as you slay them the next one pops up twice as strong it's all the ego at the end of the day probably the biggest demon when you graduated first colonial high school what were your plans for the future i didn't know uh my friends were all going off to college and their parents would ask me what what college are you going to i said well i'm moving the same my family was moving to san diego as soon as i graduated that was a plan and uh and i and i lied and i said i'm going to ucsd it sounded like a college in california what's it like growing up in san diego it was it was hell it was it was bad we think of it as being kind of you went from virginia beach yeah you think it's going to diego one beach to another this particular beach community of mission beach is a was a very tough place uh it had a very um seedy element to it you've also said that your family splintered then yeah my father had to leave he couldn't make enough money there so he had to go back to wisconsin and so he was off the premises and it just opened the home to a lot of darkness was there a divorce in your family shortly after that there was a divorce we had our last christmas together i remember it was we all knew it was our last christmas together and it was um very tearful and very we all went down around the room and you know kind of said our goodbyes as a family that's high drama yeah someone should make a movie when did you leave san diego for los angeles my father came to me one day and i was playing my base and really dark and he came to me one day and he said hey listen uh there's a house we're gonna maybe rent a new house i want you to come and check it out with me okay dad that's odd but yeah let's go we went out there and uh it was a woman a german woman in her 60s and i walked in and she said um have you ever had a a tarot card reading and i said uh i looked at my father and no what what what no we do all the dealing and all that and she says to me you have to go to los angeles to the stella adler school of acting you want to be an actor i know it's unbelievable i can't even believe i'm telling the story she she's like you you want to be an actor do you want to be an actor yes how did you know stella there will be a woman there that's going to take you in so i i went to stella adler now then i've waited 12 and a half years for tonight when i arrived in new york i thought i was gonna be a lawyer and one day i walked into a room in new york with a woman named stella adler and the law vanished and my life changed and for the next 10 years of my life i studied vestela adler with harold clermont with bobby lewis tell me about your first encounter please with the stella hadley school in los angeles i walked in the door and there before me is the romulan commander joanne linville who i'd seen on tv as a young boy and remembered her beautiful classy scared the hell out of me straight back pure class and i saw her and she said oh well come sit down and we sat and and we talked about acting and i said i don't i don't have very much experience but i feel like i'm in the right place i didn't tell her the story about the i understand the tarot cards yes she said i think i think this should be a good school for you and and that was the beginning of what would be the rest of my life time for full disclosure the aforementioned joanne linville and i were fellow students with stella hadler and she is here in this room now may i introduce joanne linville to repeat that's my teacher and my fellow student how long was the program when you studied at the academy i ended up staying seven years i i did the three years and then i did it all over again did you have any experiences with stella herself at the same time i was doing that program i i did stella's class and it was a it was a scene study class it was packed and the only way that i could afford to do it and was able to get a seat was if i taped the the show audio taped it at that time and then i could sit in the sweaty hot booth and i worked the lights i would like to introduce to our students stella adler's daughter ellen adler here we are this is the active studio drama school of pace university joanne as mark's teacher yes would you share with us his report card he had more hutzpah than any student i've ever had and probably ever will have because he had the audacity to ask his teacher to do a scene with him for stella [Applause] how did you encounter kenneth monaghan kenny lonergan was coming to la uh to do a one-act festival there and i got a call from the casting director it was a one actor that was uh two scenes pulled from what would be this is our youth and i did it and he laughed the whole time and at the end he leaned over and he said i want these two to be in my play how did this professional relationship lead to you can count on me they wanted a star for the part and um and they didn't think that i looked enough like laura linney to be her brother and so after my audition which they granted me after much uh pleading and begging they brought me in for a reading with laura linney and it was it was beautiful and they offered me the part afterwards and thank god thank you jesus praise the lord praise the lord come from jail for a little while you were what i i served a little time i guess down in florida's just first or both what what did you do anything does it occur to you that maybe i was wrong no well would you please like god please let me tell you what happened what happened i know a fight in a bar down in florida which i was not the one who instigated it at all then they worked up all this against me and they threw me in the pen for three months and i didn't write you because i didn't want you to get all upset about it i just figured that you would figure i was on the road for a little while stupid i'm sorry i didn't mean to make you worry you know but you want to know what i can't run around doing stuff we're not doing stuff because it's going to make you worry because then i come back here i tell you about my traumas and i get this wounded little i've let you down both over and over again it just cramps me i just want to get off from under it yeah back in this hall explaining myself to you again please stop cursing at me i realize that i'm in no position to basically say anything ever but it's not like i'm down there in some redneck bar in florida i'm having an argument with some strippers boyfriend i suddenly say to myself hey this would be a great time to really stick it to sammy and get myself locked up for a few would you months to these students how you worked on the role of terry where do you start it's absolutely the material um all the hints the clues that come from the material there's a lot of daydreaming that i do uh im just allowing images ideas uh impressions uh to sort of pop up while i read it and then throw all that away when you show up for work that day and hope that it's there and it's living and breathing inside you but but just commit to to being in the present with your partner there's a great image that we talked about with terry was and for a long time as a young actor this was me it was you know terry punches out into the world and his fist goes all the way around the world and hits him in the back of the head you know and and that was an image that just i got i know that guy you know that i i have that self-destructive quality in in me as well and have had it stephen holden wrote mr ruffalo's star making performance deserves to be added to the list of charismatic grown-up lost boys that includes the marlon brando of a streetcar named desire and the jack nicholson of easy rider at one point in your life you went through a medical emergency what was it i had an acoustic neuroma brain tumor that was on the in my left ear canal on my brain and and i i had to have it removed and um it was 10 months from that point uh to the time i next worked this was benign this was a benign tumor you didn't know before you were operating no it must have been frightening terrifying it was beyond terrifying it has a very good conclusion there you are i'm in the chair but you've said that it really it focused you it made me re-evaluate who i was what i wanted from my life it made me appreciate the things that i had at that point i was starting to get a little jaded about acting i was you know kind of getting more into hollywood and it felt was starting to feel empty to me and i just took a lot of blessings that i had for granted and it just opened up my eyes to the frail nature of this shell yeah and really made it clear to me what was important and how deeply i loved acting and how utterly destroyed i would be if that was taken away from me and it also made me say to myself when i die when i do die i want to look back on my life and say that was my life i did what i wanted to do i didn't do what my priest wanted me to do i didn't do what my mom and dad wanted me to do i didn't do it my teachers my wife my agents my managers the publicist i did i lived my life and that was a big lesson to learn for me at that at that point [Applause] we've introduced some people in this audience but we have studiously not introduced one are there any family members in the audience yes ladies and gentlemen yes i would like to introduce you to my wife my mate the mother of my children and my dear friend sunrise quenier ruffalo what drew you to the role of detective malloy in in the cut it was the only job i could get it was a great part very sexual very specialist yes he was a specialist he was a hit-and-run artist so to speak and um and it was a part i never played i i've been playing you know once you do one kind of authentic stoner you know slacker yeah every filmmaker is like dude i have a part for you in my movie and it's about this guy who's like a stoner and you know and that just kept happening over and over and over again in hollywood you do one good thing and they're like that's that's that's who he is we'll cast him for all those parts he's the guy he's the stoner guy he that's him that's what he does and and i was coming off of my surgery and it was a very heavy heavy time for me and jane campion asked to see me based on this movie god god knows why i mean and i was so raw and i was so afraid that i would never work again uh and we sat and we argued over what we thought the part was didn't she propose sex lessons from a gigolo yes she did what happened to that we couldn't afford it you never got a chance to see him no but she gave me um the female orgasm the book and she said to me you think this is funny but i want you to study this and uh i did and uh changed my life were there any efforts to uh censor your your part in that picture you described very graphically your specialty um there were there is a sense the the uh the yeah the american censor board did censor a a few things they didn't can i say the word i mean you say anything you want they didn't they they they thought um fellatio you know a woman giving a guy a job in the top of the movie was fine and that actually happens in the top of the movie yes but but you could not say the word clitoris and tongue in the same sentence what is that all i can say is i hope our students are taking notes tonight contemporary movies being what they are this subject comes up frequently on our stage were you and meg ryan comfortable with the film's extremely graphic sexual encounters no no clothes no clothes no hold bars it was um it was it was terrifying and it was uh very uh very raw it was um you know and you know it's taking your clothes off for a camera is is is not fun and uh having people standing the one thing i have to say is that jane campion in in her generosity offered to take her clothes off as well to make us feel more acceptable i i thought that that was a bad idea when naomi watts was with us she spoke excitedly about a film of which she was one of the producers it's called we don't live here anymore how did the role of jack linden come to it sort of came through jane campion and i got a uh a call from her saying that there was an american filmmaker who had been living in australia making films there john curran uh and and he wanted me for this movie he was doing and she thought it would be great and uh i knew andre debusse's work i'm a big fan of his i read that thing the emotional violence of it scared me there's a point in the man's life where he's his dreams aren't going to be fulfilled and he realizes that and that's where jack is in that that moment of the movie and that haunts haunted me too at the time i was sort of getting myself back on my feet even then and i knew i had a very close relationship to that feeling and that he had some of the scenes in this film are so well written directed and acted that they are nearly painful to watch terry i mean maybe you and i should sit down and talk about how long it's going to last between you and me i am not going anywhere i am you're the only wife that i know that actually gets pissed off at her husband for not hanging on her at a party other husbands touch their wives do you see hank fondling edith every second hank doesn't love her he told me when you were out he said that to you yeah oh yeah yeah why why'd he tell you that he uh i don't know he just said what he was doing he just blurted that out seems odd we were talking how else do people tell each other things well usually when people say things like that to doing other things i was blowing him on the porch but you care i don't as long as you tell me the truth the truth jack you won't even admit the truth you don't really love me terry is not true it's never been true and i'll tell you something when you say something like that for one minute it is the truth do you understand me when kate winslet was here in that chair we talked about a very interesting movie called eternal sunshine of the spotless mind what attracted you to it that that crazy story charlie kaufman's beautiful story about love and loss and and uh remembrance and then that that character we read the script and and wanted to be in anything that michelle gandrew was making uh that had to do anything to do with uh with charlie kaufman i met uh michelle and he said what do you think about the plot how do you see it and i said i i s he has a fall hawk a you know uh like a like a pompadour ty a pompadour yeah yeah and he's he's into the class you know he he he's sort of like a joe strummer throwback kind of character he plays bass at home by himself you know he plays the best that's cool you know and um and i could see he's like yeah you know it wasn't in the script that way and this character sort of started to appear uh which is stan stanley eraser man here is the result of the thoughts that you have just heard he's off the map he's optimistic where i don't know where what do you mean i don't know where this is bad this is very very bad news for my glasses okay crap okay let me do what do i do what should we do i don't know what to do i don't know what to do what should we do crap crap i don't know i just said that i'm sorry i don't know you're freaking me out oh we have to do something he quick up okay you're freaking me out and a half face okay um that sounds so good oh i'm hungry oh what what what we should call howard no way no sir man this is my i can handle this i can't fall there's no time to around i got this under control what are you talking about okay i'll call howard in 2006 mark did something remarkable he followed in his teacher's footsteps literally what play did you appear in awakening by clifford odettes this play was one of the group theater's major accomplishments who was in the original cast in 1935 yeah stella adler luther adler john garfield maurice karnovsky sanford meisner what theater did the original awakened sing play in new york it played at the theater we did it in the uh the belasco so you went into the same theater you may have passed the dressing room where stella i did did you 70 years almost to the day we started rehearsals were there ghosts in that theater for you plenty i felt like the group theater was there smiling at us from 70 years ago what so what you're it for me a home a place to live that's the whole parade of sickness eating out your heart sometimes you meet a girl she makes it stop that's love so take a chance for christ's sake be with me paradise what do you have to lose a few days ago our actor studio drama school students and i were privileged to attend a screening of zodiac tell me how this film came to you i was sent a script of zodiac and i read it and i didn't connect to it if you're going to work with dave fincher you got to show up and and be there and i think have your whole soul and heart and being present and i didn't get that from that particular what i had read and then i got a call saying that he'd like to talk to me and i went and i met him and he told me about this rewrite he was doing and who he thought dave tosky was how important he thought he was how kind of this struggle that this man makes and his ultimate sacrifice of most of his career and a big portion of his life in trying to capture the zodiac killer and it sounded really interesting to me what he was trying to do with this film you play in a detective dave toski toski has famously launched three careers what were those three careers steve mcqueen did bullet which was loosely based on dave toski there was dirty harry with maybe an actor you've heard of clint eastwood and then there was michael douglas who did streets of san francisco did you meet him the first thing i asked to do was was get up there and meet him to san francisco yeah and so i showed up there and i regaled the poor guy with questions for the next you know 16 hours i was with him for two days in a row sitting at his desk while he was working watching him listening to him taking little videos of him he he was a cop that didn't identify himself with other cops really this guy's wearing bow ties uh houndstooths polyester pants with a tight crotch and a and a wild 70s sort of haircut and he was very charismatic and the press loved him and he was very good with people and and and because of that it made him a very good cop when jody foster was in the chair we talked about panic room yes and david fincher at that time he was into computer storyboarding and pre-visualization that required his actors to fit precisely into the frame that he envisioned he has said that he abandoned that method because it was too restrictive how did he work with you and the other actors in zodiac it was uh all about the character the only shot plan or design that he had for this movie was that the characters would be talking in long takes without many cuts and so we fastidiously dug into the material dug into the background the research to create this world that we could move and live and breathe in very freely as actors and we did a lot of takes because the one thing dave fincher i think is very aware of is that this movie now on digital will far outlast his life or any of us here and he's very aware that it's one his one shot at eternity so good enough baby ain't good enough i've seen your performance in this film and it's admirable so clearly you adjusted to fincher's style no handwriting ballistics no match prints no match writing no match on both hands right because we got handwriting from both his hands and neither hand matches forget sherwood let's get another opinion fellas he's not your guy okay what do you want time off a hug do you know what the worst part of this is i can't tell if i wanted to be alan so bad because i actually thought it was him or i just want all this to be over because he thought it was him and i did too you know what take some time off spend some time with your wife and the kids go to candlestick see a movie how long was the shoot i think it was 165 days by the time it was all said and done what kind of camera did fincher and his dp use we use the next generation viper uh digital camera high definition digital camera at that point for you as the actor how does that differ from a shoot on traditional conventional film there's no time to go to the bathroom uh they there's no there's no sticks there's no uh they can light you know you could shoot it with candle light um it's very fast um and you're shooting all day you never go back to your trailer when you were with dave toski did he reveal to you who he thought the zodiac killer was his favorite was always arthur lee allen and the moment he sat down with him the first time he felt in his guts that he was the guy he never was able to get a solid piece of evidence against him and so he had to carry on uh as a professional as he is uh with the investigation as if he the person out there that the perp was was still at large who do you think the zodiac was i was given everything that any other cop has ever gotten to see of this case i've seen videotapes of arthur lee allen this guy is clearly a sociopath there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence against this man but not a shred of solid evidence and as much as i want to say it was him i can't completely sit there's still that shadow of a dog [Music] there's a quote that she ripped off from george bernard shaw but it's a great quote you should have to pay to go to church and the theater should be free we begin our classroom with the questionnaire that was made famous by bernard pivot borrowed by him from marcel proust tell me would you please mark what is your favorite word lovely what is your least favorite word neocon what turns you on passion what turns you off greed what sound or noise do you love children's laughter what sound or noise do you hate children crying what is your favorite curse word [Laughter] what profession other than your own would you like to attempt writing directing slash what profession would not interest you at all cement work if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates welcome jesus was a liberal [Laughter] here are your students hi my name is ella i'm a first-year acting student i was wondering while studying with stella what is one thing that sort of touched you the most and has helped you in creating an honest character and truly just staying in the moment what she was talking about that the the playwrights uh were trying to convey ideas that were big ideas about humanity and that you had a responsibility as an artist to to take these things and to use yourself but to lift these ideas uh in a in a dramatic way she would scream at you never be boring darlings i mean that was her main thing it was like a death sentence to be boring and so um what you see great exciting acting is they're lifting the ideas of the play they're being taken by the ideas of the play and set a fire and the self goes away the ego goes away and now you're in service and that was something that she talked about there's a quote that she ripped off from george bernard shaw but it's a great quote you should have to pay to go to church and the theater should be free what she was able to do was make it uh something you'd stroll for you made yourself better you had a responsibility you were an artist darling you know and uh that was a turn-on to to this young punk pothead from uh from virginia beach you know [Music] out of fear i just broke through myself and was talking about living live live hi hi my name is josh i'm a first year actor student actor studio mfa you were talking about stella adler telling you that um you can't drag the character down to your level you have to elevate yourself to it would you be willing to maybe uh give an example of an element of some character you played that you felt you were dragging and you had to there are things that you play that are obviously closer to you that that those big ideas are something that you know in your life so so they're they're the reach isn't so so big one of the first times i really saw a glimpse of this was i was doing a scene for stella of the case of the crushed petunias and i was up there and literally just sucking like wet dry vac sucking like just the worst and and i left my i sort of like got a hold of this idea of what he was saying and out of fear i just broke through myself and was talking about living live you go to the graveyard and they're dead that's what it says they're dead there and it and it and it it took me out of myself it popped me out into the that idea and i was much better than i just did now i assure you and that was a very simplistic idea of a big idea that when you go to the graveyard you look around and everyone there is dead and at the end of this life they're going to throw dirt in your face man and so we learn from the graveyard to live that's a big idea and you you don't say that like you're saying it to a buddy right now you're saying it to somebody who's who's about who has a gun to their head who who's throwing their life away you make the stakes so much bigger that when you say live you're talking about the experience of mankind and the nature of its insistence upon its survival you know that's how big it that's how that's the kind of stuff that you could be doing and when you see actors who are on fire it's because they're lifted up into a bigger idea [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jigokushoujo

Views: 93,569

Keywords: mark ruffalo, james lipton, inside the actors, studio, acting, interview, stella adler, you can count on me, joanne linville, sunrise ruffalo

Id: COptlt4rBXw

Length: 44min 35sec (2675 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021