Mark Ruffalo put on 30 pounds of muscle and fat for Foxcatcher. He speaks about working with Channing Tatum and his penchant for playing varied roles
You are playing the role of a wrestler in Foxcatcher. Did your previous experience in wrestling help prepare for the roleIJ
Wrestling is hard. It looks like it’s easy but it’s not. It was harder for me because I had to unlearn everything that I already knew and that was really frustrating. Plus, Dave (my character) was 33 and at the height of his athletic powers, when I’m deeply waning in mine. Any fantasy I had about myself as an athletically adept young man was quickly discredited and debauched in the first two weeks.
Did you undergo physical changes to get into the skin of the characterIJ
They used to call Dave a Tyrannosaurus rex. He had this strange way of holding his arms — tucking his elbows against his torso and dangling his hands at the wrist. It was weird, unnatural and uncool and not very killer-like, which I thought him to be. But it really gave me so much insight into who he was. A guy who stands like that, he’s in the world in a way that other people aren’t.
Share your experience of working with Channing Tatum, who plays Mark.
It was quite difficult at times because Bennett Miller (director) has a unique style of shooting a film. It penetrates deep into the characters and digs out the exact emotion or action that he wants. Most of the time Channing and I were pushed into places where we were mostly hanging around being completely vulnerable. I guess, that ultimately made me look at him as my brother in a real way.
How did you work through the relationship of being brothersIJ
Wrestlers communicate a lot more than athletes than any other sport I can think of. Through physical expression and physical kind of communication, it’s very nuanced and subtle, but there’s a whole language there. So we were working out together all the time’ and that one scene at the beginning of the film, where we’re doing a warmup practice, it encapsulates their entire history and relationship. We worked on that routine every single time we wrestled together — it makes you really close. But we were also informed by the real relationship these people had, and there was a huge weight and responsibility to that.
The opening scene of the movie shows the two brothers wrestling each other...
We started every practice with that warm-up. So, by the time we shot the movie, it was like second nature. And that’s when magical stuff happens with acting.
How much did you train to look like DaveIJ
I put on 30 pounds of muscle and fat in seven months. I was a wrestler in high school but I led with my right foot, while Dave led with his left. It was the mirror opposite of everything I knew. I was making another movie at the time, Begin Again. So, I weight trained in the morning and wrestled in the afternoon.
Were you training with Channing at the same timeIJ
We worked out for a month — meeting, talking and poring over our characters. It was very intense.
What was it like consulting with the real Mark SchultzIJ
Mark has a legacy he’s watching over, both for himself and his brother, so there’s a tension there between being honest about the story and protecting the legacy. He wants the world to see him and his brother in a particular light. He was courageous enough to let Bennett take his story and humanise it. There was an open dialogue.
You have films like Foxcatcher and The Avengers sequel, which belong to different genre. Are you conscious of balancing the movies you doIJ
last year was a very special year for me. I’ve been carrying these movies for a while and I wanted to do all of them. Strangely, they all materialised within eight months at a time. I realised that I am 47 and reaching the peak of my career. This might be as good as it gets for me.
So I was very conscious of putting myself out in a way I had never done before and being as courageous as I possibly could be with the breadth and the width of the work. I was very hell-bent on showing up.