In some other timeline, Mark Ruffalo never hulks out. In ours, that almost happened. While out promoting his latest film, Crime 101, Ruffalo said he actually quit acting back in 2010 after falling hard for directing.
He walked away after his first time in the director's chair
Ruffalo directed his first and only feature, Sympathy for Delicious, and it flipped a switch. He fell for the job so completely that he stepped off the acting treadmill and, as he tells it, did it decisively.
"I directed a movie... and I literally loved it so much that I quit. I fired my agent and manager and was like 'That's it.'"
Then The Kids Are All Right happened
That same year, 2010, The Kids Are All Right arrived and changed his course. Ruffalo played Paul Hatfield, a breezy organic-restaurant owner who also happens to be the anonymous sperm donor for a lesbian couple and the biological father of their two kids. The movie drew raves, and Ruffalo’s turn popped in a big way.
He scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. And, in the afterglow, he stepped back into the acting lane and soon landed Bruce Banner/The Hulk in The Avengers. As Ruffalo puts it:
"I got nominated for an Academy Award, and everything changed for me, so I went back to acting."
Wild career fork: one indie dramedy nudges him toward an Oscar nod, and the next stop is smashing up New York in a superhero juggernaut. Nice little what-if for the multiverse, though.