Mark Ruffalo‘s first Oscar nomination had a greater impact on his career trajectory than you might think.
The Crime 101 actor, who scored his first of four Best Supporting Actor nominations in 2011 for The Kids Are All Right, tells Entertainment Weekly that he was on the verge of stepping away from acting altogether before receiving the honor.
“I directed a movie…and I literally loved it so much that I quit,” he reveals in a joint interview alongside his Crime 101 costars, Halle Berry and Chris Hemsworth. “I fired my agent and manager and was like, ‘That’s it.'”
But then, he adds, “I got nominated for an Academy Award, and everything changed for me, so I went back to acting.”
Ruffalo made his directorial debut with 2010’s Sympathy for the Delicious, which he starred in alongside an all-star cast including Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney, Orlando Bloom, and Christopher Thornton. The film, which follows a newly paralyzed DJ (Thorton) who becomes involved in the world of faith healing, won the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
In The Kids Are All Right, which also premiered at Sundance that year, Ruffalo played Paul Hatfield, the owner of an organic foods restaurant and biological father (via an anonymous sperm donation) for Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), the teenage children of Annette Bening and Julianne Moore‘s characters. The movie, which earned numerous honors, including a Best Picture nomination, was among the first mainstream films to depict a same-sex couple raising children.
Two years after his nomination, Ruffalo made his first appearance as the Hulk/Bruce Banner in The Avengers. After achieving Marvel superstardom, he continued to deliver standout supporting performances in dramas including Foxcatcher (2015), Spotlight (2016), and Poor Things (2024), all of which earned him Oscar nods.
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But Ruffalo says he still dreams of getting back behind the camera one day.
“There’s something I’ve been developing for the last four years that I really want to do that’s sort of starting to get some traction right now,” he tells EW. “So I’d like to go back to that.”
Crime 101 is now in theaters.
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