Mark Ruffalo
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Mark Ruffalo is a pretty good looking guy but he’s no matinee idol, but that hasn’t stopped him from being in some of the best films recently and starring with the biggest actors. From his breakout role in 2000’s You Can Count on Me to the more recent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Jim Carrey and Collateral with Tom Cruise.

He always seems to pick the heaviest roles in any movie he’s in and We Don't Live Here Anymore is no different. He plays a New England college professor who is cheating on his wife with his best friend’s wife. This causes ripples in both relationships and brings about crises.

Go to the official website for We Don’t Live Here Anymore

Daniel Robert Epstein: We heard that you were the first one to get onboard with this movie. Was it the script or was it the director?

Mark Ruffalo: It was a combination between [director] John [Curran] and [screenwriter] Larry Gross. I read the script, although I thought it was outstanding, it really scared me. I couldn’t think of any directors that could handle it in a really mature, sort of balanced way. This movie’s impossible and then I find out it’s been around since the 70’s. It seemed appropriate. It was at the cusp of a lot of these types of films that were coming out in the 70’s. I met with John and started talking to him about where he was coming from. I saw his first picture, Praise, and I thought yes, absolutely yes. This guy can do something really special with this film.

DRE: What do you think is more critical in making a film? Having costars you can play off or having a director that gives you freedom to explore your character?

MR: I think first is probably the script. If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage. Then it’s a combination of those two things. You have to have actors that are willing to commit to the material, but also a director who can guide it. Or you have actors that can commit and a director who doesn’t know what they’re doing. You can get away with that too. In this particular case, we had a really strong director and really strong actors. It pops up to something that’s a little more than good.

DRE: There are a lot of sexually charged scenes in the movie, but they’re not titillating or provocative. It’s a release that they do to get over their angst. As an actor, you have this activity all around you. How can you do those scenes take after take?

MR: You hope there’s not a lot of takes of it. It’s always awkward. Naomi [Watts] doesn’t want to be there. It’s not as enjoyable as it may look, especially if the girl’s not into it. There are laws against that. The sex, like you said, comes out of this release. There’s a lot of guilt and shame involved with the sex scenes. It’s not the kind of sex that comes out of loving, fantastic relationships. It’s sex that they use to cover up the shabbiness of their lives. Those scenes carry that kind of ickiness in a way. That also makes them even more difficult to play.

DRE: They’re very effective, but that part out in the woods. You’re surrounded by thirty crewmen.

MR: That was a particularly horrible day. Both Naomi [Watts] and I, before we did the movie, didn’t feel that the movie needed explicit sex scenes. Neither of us wanted to get nude in any of the sex scenes. John was like; we’re going to shoot it where you only see the sides of you. What am I going to wear? You mean you need to see the sides of us naked. That’s pretty much our whole bodies. He’s like, we won’t see it. Who’s we, you won’t see it. The camera won’t see it, but everybody else will.

DRE: That’s not the day you invite your wife to the set.

MR: Oh God no, Jesus, that’s a big mistake and I’ve done that.

DRE: You have a young looking face. Did the beard help you feel older?

MR: When I was daydreaming about this character, for some reason, I saw him with a beard. It felt right, but I had to fight for the beard. Both Peter [Krause] and I both wanted a beard. So it was like, who’s going to have the beard for a little while. I ended up putting on ten pounds too. That helped me feel a little bit older and in that world of the intelligentsia that they’re living in.

DRE: What did it seem like the really tough scenes were when you were hanging out with Peter’s character? Did you guys have discussions about them?

MR: They were hard and difficult scenes to work your way through, because you have to play it on the edge. Does he know? Peter has to play it in an ambiguous way. We don’t know if he knows, but he’s sort of pretending. He makes a comment. Finding those moments are difficult. The night before we shot that scene, we worked on it for hours. We rewrote it and reworked it and pulled stuff from the book and then cut stuff. A piece of that scene was cut in editing too. Those were difficult scenes.

DRE: Were you wrecked afterwards?

MR: You’re tired by the end of the day of working. Plus we where shooting so quickly. We did that scene and two other scenes that same day. You have to be right on your game. You have a small time to get it right. There’s a lot of stress involved in getting it worked out.

DRE: How hard were the scenes with Laura [Dern]?

MR: Those scenes were crazy. The fight scenes, as an actor, those are really fun scenes to do. They have a lot of dramatic material in them. I never want to be mean to Laura Dern. I love Laura Dern. If you were a race car driver and you get to drive the best Lamborghini in the world or if you’re a violinist and get to play a Stradivarius, that’s what it’s like to work with Laura Dern. She’s like the best. She’s so present, giving, and committed. It’s so much fun. All those people are really great actors. It was very satisfying to do those scenes.

DRE: John [Curran] had mentioned that you guys didn’t have rehearsal. Was it difficult to start without them?

MR: Hell yeah, but part of that helped the film in a way. No one was prepared to do this film. Our production time was a fraction of what it would normally be. Everyone, the gaffer, the lighting department, was flying by the seat of their pants. It made this urgency and made everyone help each other. It created this feeling on set that we were all in this totally difficult, impossible task together. The outcome would depend on how well we’d be able to catch each other as we were falling. That created a really tight ensemble. You ended up having to count on each other. The performances are really immediate and really tight. You didn’t have the time to work out your performance. You’re just doing it as it was coming. You couldn’t edit it. Some of it was really messy. You couldn’t sweeten your character up. John purposely made us as harsh as we could possibly be. That belies a certain connection these characters have. People who are that hard on each other have to really care and have a deep, deep connection. That’s what we came to understand as we were shooting.

DRE: As a follow up to that question, you guys have this great screen chemistry. Can you tell us what you did to flesh that out?

MR: Where should we eat tonight? Do you want Chinese? You sort of tend to counter what you’re going to be doing the next day. There’s a real gentleness and sort of familial vibe, a lot of joking around. It’s sort of staged really light. That’s the best way to deal with those scenes. The best thing you could do for your fellow actor is learn your lines. There’s not a lot of aggressive emotional stuff going on between us. It’s really light. That set needed a lightness in order to play those scenes. I always find that actors that are walking around in their angst filled characters are just fucking boring. They tend to be shut down. They don’t have a sense of play, so the scenes lose a spontaneity that I think you need. I always find it to be incredible boring.

DRE: You recently had a brain tumor. Would you ever do a movie about a character with a brain tumor?

MR: If it really spoke to me, I’ll read something and just say, that’s somewhere I’ve never been as an actor or that’s something I really care about. Or it engages me, interests me, that’s how I pick my projects. You end up drawing on your life experiences. Not in the way you actually used them, but you understand the nature and truth of those experiences. It just gives me a greater understating of the material. And if I don’t understand the character or material, I go out and try to learn as much as I can about that particular subject.

DRE: Jack is a complex character. How did you relate to him?

MR: The book was a big help to me. It gives you a backstory. You know where the guy is coming from. This is not a guy who plops down. These are people that had a relationship that have been working for ten years. There’s never been this sort of thing going on between them. What’s different, and this is a phenomenon that actually happens in relationships, is this thing called “The Gray Itch”. His perception of his youth has passed him. His dreams will never be realized. He’s financially no better now than when he started. The children have come between him and his wife. They’ve neglected their relationship. He’s been out of communication. He hasn’t said the things to her that he needs to say. The horrible things that you never want to say to another human being, but you have to for a healthy relationship. I personally have had friends in the last few years that have gone through what these people are going through. People that I love dearly and love their relationship. The guy came to this point, where he was like, who am I? It’s like a second adolescence. I just thought this was a real phenomenon. And I knew his backstory, which helped me carry this character off and define his humanity. This guy is not a jerk-off. This is a decent man whose gone way off. He’s in deep misery. They both are. Here dreams haven’t been realized. She’s really, in the book, the smart one. She’s the smart one of the whole group. She’s subverted her intelligence to be a mother. She’s sold herself short. She has a lot of resentment. She’s not a housewife. They should have a housecleaner. She should be teaching school. They didn’t honor each other and this is where they’ve ended up.

DRE: This is what I got from the film, see if you agree with this. Your character has a competitive nature with Hank. But Hank is morally bankrupt because he’s the only one that understands what’s really going on. It seemed that your character was really torn up by this whole thing.

MR: Totally, he’s tormented by it. You sense that he’s really reticent about going forward with the relationship through ¾ of the film. When he finally says, I love Edith; it has no passion in it. I just think he’s unconscious until that moment, when he realizes what he’s going to lose. All of this meanness that he’s displaying with his wife is a perfect manifestation of the way he’s feeling about himself. This hateful feeling that he has and this guilt, it’s eating him alive. The only way he can deal with it is either push her off into a relationship or attack her in a way that’s destructive to their relationship. I think this guy is at the darkest time of his being. And you see it. He has a morality. What’s amazing is that he does have a deep moral compass. Because of that he’s deeply affected, Hank, it’s so easy for him. I had a woman say to me; your character is such an asshole. What about Hank? He’s fine, he doesn’t know better!

DRE: How does it feel for things to be going so well. Jim Carrey then Tom cruise. Are you waiting for the other shoe to drop? Or are you just enjoying it?

MR: I’m always waiting for the piano to fall out of the sky. It’s a blue-collar, struggling actor holdover. I’ve been working a lot. I’m always afraid it’s going to come crashing down. This world is so fickle. It eats people up and spits them out every day.

DRE: How do you avoid that?

MR: I feel that you have to establish yourself as an actor, as someone who is able to do character work. Those are the careers that I really love. Those actors that have been pushed into movie stardom, but they’re just actors.

DRE: Is there anyone in particular that has really inspired your career?

MR: Probably Marcello Mastroianni. He just had a real class and panache. He did a lot of different things. He was always going back to theatre. He was just a classy guy. My training comes from Marlon Brando’s background, Stella Adler. I think he’s the venerated, great American actor that somehow got sidetracked. His early work is probably the best we have in America. Then there’s Pacino, De Niro, the “O’s”.

DRE: In Collateral, you’ve established a core of great dramatic and romantic comedy work, that’s the first time you’ve been seen as an action star. Would you be in a big budget action film?

MR: I’m not drawn to that particular material. It was Michael Mann and I hadn’t played a guy quite like that. Michael subverts the genre a little bit. That’s a character movie in the confines of a thriller. If it’s smart enough, I tend to have a disdain to the gratuitous violent movie. Who knows? Probably yes at some point, if it was smart, seemed cool to me, and if there’s was good people in it. It’s not where my heart first tells me where to go.

DRE: Are you still doing the Jennifer Aniston film?

MR: I’m shooting that right now. Then I’m doing Steven Zaillian’s All the King’s Men in January with Sean Penn.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Mark+Ruffalo/