Mark Ruffalo says ‘Zodiac’ studio rep didn’t want to cast him – The Hollywood Reporter

Mark Ruffalo announced his casting in the 2007 serial killer drama Zodiac didn’t go quite as well as some might think.

In a recent interview with High snobberyThe actor said a studio representative made it clear that they didn’t necessarily want him in the Paramount Pictures film.

“I’ll never forget when they negotiated my deal [for Zodiac]the studio negotiator literally said to my manager, “Look, we don’t give a shit about Mark Ruffalo, we don’t even want Mark Ruffalo in this movie, so you take what we offer you, right.” “Forget it,” Ruffalo recalls .

In ZodiacDirected by David Fincher, two reporters, Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., are obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unknown murderer who went on a killing spree in San Francisco in the 1970s. Ruffalo played detective David Toschi in the film.

But those comments didn’t deter the Oscar-nominated actor, especially since he later landed a role he never could have imagined: Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I thought… I’d never done that before. Studios, they didn’t come to me that way,” he said of his first call from Marvel. “So Joss Whedon coming to me about the Hulk came out of the blue. That’s a difficult part – how do you manage to play a character who doesn’t want to do what everyone wants him to do and keep it up? It’s like a trap. I read it and thought, ‘I can do something with this.'”

Looking back, Ruffalo’s experience playing the iconic superhero in multiple MCU films was one he is “really grateful” for.

“It was a great trip,” he said Poor things said the actor. “It gave me the chance to do other things that I probably wouldn’t have the chance to do without that support.”

Earlier in the interview, Ruffalo also admitted that he was determined to break out of the romantic-comedy box that he felt Hollywood executives had put him in after his hit films 13 Next 30 And Like in heaven early in his career.

“What I immediately felt in the film world is that if you’ve done one thing well, they think you are,” he explained. “They will keep coming back to you with this piece. And I said, “No.” My career isn’t going to be like that. I’m going to do as much as I can to make people see me in different ways so I can do more as the years go by.”

The Hollywood Reporter Paramount has reached out for comment.