Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
MARK RUFFALO
Classic Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, weekdays, 10pm, Challenge
Eating History, In US series men scoff adventurous two food well-preserved possibly
– including from yesteryear cereal. 72-year-old some
Thursday,
10pm,
Sky History racy, pacey Ryan Murphy’s to Politician moves drama The where series two,
New York in tough political Payton faces Gold advisor Hadassah
(Bette Midler).
Netflix
From Friday,
Monday, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
1
I play two characters – house painter Dominick Birdsey and his schizophrenic twin Thomas, who Dominick tries to protect. Thomas is 13kg heavier, so I filmed my scenes as Dominick and then we took a break in filming while I transformed into Thomas – with no exercise and a diet of oatmeal, butter, heavy whipped cream and maple syrup.
2
When I was filming a scene with my character’s brother, rather than me just act to nothing, we got in a fantastic actor called Gabe Fazio who had a similar look to me. He even put on the same amount of weight as me in order to play Thomas.
3
Dominick and Thomas are very different and Dominick was probably the harder of the two to get to grips with. In the end, we majored on his masculinity. The
director, Derek Cianfrance, told me to do 50 push-ups between each take so that I felt fired up. I’ve been told I was quite prickly and aggressive as Dominick.
4
I must have watched 1,000 hours of online footage of people living with schizophrenia but I felt I also had to meet people with the condition. I spent a lot of time with a guy called Richard Wiedeman, a member of The National Alliance On Mental Illness in the USA, who gave me great insight.
5
The two roles were all consuming – I was even dreaming about playing the parts. I had one in which Thomas morphed into a furry rodent, a chubby little marmot in a tightfitting suit and I actually found myself adopting the physicality of this dream creature when I shot subsequent scenes.