Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Mark Ruffalo in ‘Infinitley Polar Bear’
The film is based on a true story about a bipolar father and his family
If Mark Ruffalo ever decides to take a break from acting, he has plenty of other skills to fall back on.
“I can change the clutch plates on a 1978 Honda 250,” he reports. “I can tear apart motorcycles and put them back together again … I’ve also done construction, house painting, garden work. I’ve done a lot of odd jobs.” Oh, and he can cook too. “Yeah, I can cook,” says the Wisconsin native. “[I’m] kind of a dying breed of man. The next generation doesn’t [do this kind of stuff.] My kids are, like, “What is that? Can’t we just do an app of it?’ ”
While shooting his latest movie “Infinitely Polar Bear” in New England, Ruffalo lived in a house above co-star Zoe Saldana. He often whipped up meals like pots of vegetable ginger soup for everyone on the premises, including Saldana and writer/director Maya Forbes (“Monsters vs. Aliens,” “The Larry Sanders Show”).
“I would cook for Maya and [her husband] Wally and Zoe and [her husband] Marco, and so we all hung out a lot together, which is always great for a movie.”
Whatever Ruffalo’s doing to get into character, it’s working out wonderfully for him. “Infinitely Polar Bear” has, so far, netted rave reviews for its based-on-a-truestory tale of two lively young girls ( played by Ashley Aufderheide and the director’s daughter Imogene Wolodarsky) who are being raised by their bipolar father Cam while their mom Maggie (Saldana) pursues a business degree.
When Ruffalo discovered that Forbes used her late father as a touchstone for the character of Cam, he attempted to find out everything he could about him.
“I was trying to get as much as I could: pictures, recordings, letters, video, anything I could get a hold of,” says the actor. “But mostly it was the stories that informed me about who he was. There’s a lot of great, funny things that he did that didn’t make it into the film.
“And I had a piece of video, probably eight minutes long, and it was him hanging out with the girls, and then him having a breakfast with his mother and father. And that became a really great tool for me to get an idea of his patois and his mannerisms and the way he carried himself.”
In the movie, opening July 3, Cam seesaws between being an unreliable parent who goes off his meds and forgets to pick the girls up from school to being the kind of Dad who’ll stay up all night to sew a flamenco dress for a talent show.
“Who is Cam? He was a curious, childlike, poetical, whimsical guy who had a great appetite for life,” says Ruffalo.
One aspect of Cam’s life that Ruffalo was determined to portray accurately was his struggle with bouts of mental illness.
“I hope [we found] the right tone,” says the actor, 47. “I’ve grown up with people who are bipolar, and I’ve known people who are bipolar, and the most important thing I had to capture was who Cam was. And then lay the bipolar onto that because what bipolar is, really, is just the extremes of emotions.
“The fun part of it was riding those extremes. And then it’s all grounded in his deep and abiding love for his daughters; and his belief in that family. What’s so touching about him is that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than with Maggie and those girls. His illness just prevents him from being via- ble as a breadwinner.”
Ruffalo, who has three children with his longtime wife Sunrise Coigney, could relate to many aspects of Cam’s personality but knowing that Forbes’ father was, in real life, a Boston blueblood took some getting used to.
“I didn’t understand that,” says the actor. “I’m blue-collar. I joked with Maya that her family came over on the Mayfair a couple hundred years ago and my family rowed over in a rowboat 50 years ago. I didn’t understand all these rules and ways of speaking … that don’t have any sort of rhyme or reason to them other than that was the way they did things. “
At the heart of the movie, says Ruffalo, is a look at how even the most unconventional of families can pull together and make it through the day-to-day struggles of living.
“Family happens, and it takes all kinds,” says the actor. “And there’s a lot of room for all different kinds of families.
“I also think that [the movie] creates space for people with mental illness that maybe other films don’t generally give them. It allows this dialogue; it allows them to be people, instead of an illness. ... And I also think it says that love is really the answer.”
“Infinitely Polar Bear” isn’t Ruffalo’s only summer movie. He also co-stars in a little film called “Avengers 2: Age of Ultron” as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk. The Marvel epic has picked up $1.3 billion in its first two months of release.
Even though Ruffalo has made a name for himself largely in indie films like “You Can Count On Me,” “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind,” “The Kids Are Allright” and “Foxcatcher,” he’s just a comfortable in bigger-budgeted fare like “Shutter Island” and “Now You See Me.”
“I love acting, and I don’t really see a difference between the kind of acting you do in a big movie or a small movie,” notes the twotime Oscar nominee. “Each director takes you on a trip that’s different from anything else you’ve done before, if you’re willing to go with them.”
Ruffalo admits he was as surprised as some Marvel fans when he was tapped to play the Incredible Hulk.
“I just found it interesting that I would be [cast in a Marvel movie] because generally they don’t use actors like me in these movies.
“Scarlett [Johansson] and I, when we were on the [`Avengers 2’] tour, were looking at each other, like, “What are we doing here?” We’re two indie cockroaches, and now we’re staying in these hotels. We’re these indie kids.’ “
Ruffalo is remaining in the big-budget mode for his next two films: “Spotlight,” a thriller about how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese; and “Now You See Me: The Second Act,” a sequel to the hit heist movie of 2013.
Regardless of whether Ruffalo is appearing in a small or big films, the characters have a way of staying with him even after he’s wrapped the production and is back home with his wife and kids.
“Me and my wife have fondly come to refer to [the process of adjustment] as “re-entry,” which is me coming back into the family after walking around [as] some total stranger,” he says.
“So, my wife is, like, “You totally change from every character. You start walking like them and you behave like them and you talk like them.’
“It’s a pain in the ass sometimes … I don’t see it personally. My feeling is you can’t really come into contact with these different people without having them change you in some way. … They’re all in here somewhere, all mixed-up together, which can make you a little crazy.”