Mark Ruffalo has revealed that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor more than 20 years ago when his wife was nine months pregnant with their first child. On Monday, 24 January, Ruffalo shared this intriguing story with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on the Smartless podcast. "I had a brain tumor after the success of You Can Count on Me. It’s the craziest thing. I was actually shooting ‘The Last Castle’ with [James] Gandolfini and Robert Redford and I had about a week left on that," revealed the actor.
Mark Ruffalo shared how he found out about his brain tumor
The Avengers: Endgame actor, Mark Ruffalo recalled that he had a 4 a.m. call to be on the set. "I woke up probably around three and I just had this crazy dream, you know, it wasn’t like any other dream I ever had. It was just like, ‘You have a brain tumor.’ It wasn’t even a voice. It was just pure knowledge: ‘You have a brain tumor, and you have to deal with it immediately," Ruffalo said as he went down memory lane.
The Marvel star said that he had no symptoms other than an ear infection, but decided to visit the cast doctor anyway. "Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but I had this dream last night that I have a brain tumor’ and she said, ‘That is crazy, but there’s no reason you should have to worry about it. I’ll order you a CAT scan, and we’ll go right after work today, and we’ll show how crazy you are," Mark stated.
AdvertisementRuffalo then went to the neurologist’s office to read the scan later. He further recalled, "The nurse calls the doctor out, and I could hear them talking in the other room, and she just comes in, and she’s a zombie, and she says, ‘You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball, and we don’t know what it is. We can’t tell until it’s biopsied.’"
Mark Ruffalo recalled how he told his wife about his condition
Mark Ruffalo said that he didn’t want to tell his wife, Sunrise Coigney about his medical condition, "She had the birth plan, she did the yoga, she had the doula, we had a hot tub ordered. This is like her wedding, you know, man? This is like her christening, her quinceañera, and I was just like, ‘I can’t.’ She’s already like, ‘Oh God, him again? I mean, does everything gotta be about him?’ So, I just couldn’t."
The 13 Going on 30 star also added that a week after their baby was born, he had to meet the neurologist to decide what he would do. "I hadn’t told her until the night before," he said of his wife. "At first she thought I was joking, and then she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were going to die young!’," Ruffalo shared.
The brain tumor turned out to be benign, but it left him "totally" deaf in one ear. "And when I woke up, the left side of my face was totally paralyzed. Like I couldn’t even close my eye and was talking out of the side of my mouth," he explained, adding that the doctors had told him he had a "20% chance of nicking the nerve on the left side of my face and killing it and then I had 70% chance of losing my hearing, which went."
He said at that point he spoke to a higher power, saying, "‘OK, I don’t really believe in you, but take my hearing, let me keep the face and let me be the father to these kids."
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