Long before Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo ever wore Bruce Banner’s purple pants (either digitally or in real life), he was known for his pursuit of truly interesting and diverse roles in film, television, and theater. That trend continues to the present day, with Ruffalo starring in Poor Things. Speaking with NPR, Ruffalo talks about acting in comedies as well as the pluses — major challenges — of acting in a motion-capture suit in front of a green screen for his Marvel roles.
Ruffalo notes that comedy typically allows an actor to improvise parts of the performance… including otherwise embarrassing bodily functions. He explains, “In comedy, I find, you have to be very open to play. […] If you’re in the flow of comedy, the accidents are the goal. Those are the gifts from God. There’s [a] moment in the movie where Duncan farts when [the character] Max McCandles comes in to confront him. And that was like the acting gods just filled my belly with gas. I was like, here we go! Great comedy is something that happens spontaneously and is playful. The same thing happens with drama, but people are so much more well-behaved around drama.”
“As an actor, you learn to love a costume. You learn to hide behind props, you learn to sink into a set and lose yourself in the world.”
And while most of us would love to be able to play one of the world’s beloved superheroes, Ruffalo admits that it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be — especially when filming in a form-fitting motion capture suit that lives little for an actor to draw from for inspiration. He says, “It’s the most humiliating thing in the world. I had a little loincloth made for it at one point as the years went on because it’s just so not modest. It’s the most vulnerable thing in the world. As an actor, you learn to love a costume. You learn to hide behind props, you learn to sink into a set and lose yourself in the world.”
Yet Ruffalo points out that acting in from of a green screen has close parallels to theater training. He explains. “But when you’re in green screen – it’s just you, and you’re naked and it’s all your imagination, you have to put things there that aren’t there. You have to play off people that aren’t there. You have to use props that aren’t there. This is in the beginning. It’s changed quite a bit now. But you know what I found? All the theater training that I had, you walk onto a stage and you’re in a black box, basically. You have to really develop your imagination to make that place a forest or a castle or a desolate landscape. … So in a lot of ways, this ancient technology that I’d been so versed in actually was the best preparation for this new modern thing that was happening.”
