He’s signed to play the Incredible Hulk in Joss Whedon’s film version of “The Avengers,” but at the moment Mark Ruffalo is enjoying a rather incredible moment of a different sort. Appearing alongside Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, he’s the sperm donor who shakes up the lives of a lesbian couple in Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” a family drama from Focus Features that has become the summer’s top-grossing independent film. It's is on course to contend for awards and rival the box-office take of last year’s surprise hit, “(500) Days of Summer.”
I understand you approached Lisa after seeing her last film.
I’d seen “High Art,” and I thought, that’s an auteur. That’s a filmmaker with a voice, and a style. And I could see she loved actors. Then I met her by chance at Victor’s Deli in the Hollywood hills, and I said, “I’d really love to work with you, I think you’re a great filmmaker.” And she said, “Yeah, I love your work, too.”
Which is probably the kind of conversation that happens a thousand times a day in Hollywood.
Yeah, and nothing ever comes of those things. Except this one time. Because lo and behold, a few years later I get a call saying, “Lisa’s doing a movie, and she’d like to talk to you.” And here we are.
When you got the script to “The Kids Are All Right,” did you respond right away?
I really did. I loved the point of view, and it didn’t feel like we’d ever seen anything like this. Although that character is kind of iconic in American cinema, that kind of fun-loving bachelor, I didn’t think we’d ever seen him fall apart the way he does in this movie. I thought it was really well written, and I was interested in seeing how she was going to handle it.
But I was in the middle of editing my movie [“Sympathy for Delicious,” which Ruffalo directed], and I’d planned a trip with my family, and they couldn’t move their dates. So it really didn’t look like it was going to work out. Basically, we sort of moved on from each other. But then their schedule opened up, they lost the actor who replaced me, and my wife was talking to Julianne, who’s a friend of hers, and all of a sudden the thing came back around.
Your co-stars have said the set was dominated by women, and then you showed up and brought a male energy they hadn’t had before. Did you feel like you were walking into a den of women?
I did like the fact that there were a lot of women around. [laughs] As far as the crew and all, it seemed pretty well balanced, but certainly there were more women than men as far as actors went. But it was perfect for the story.
