Oscar-nominated actor shares his terrifying diagnosis
Mark Ruffalo has opened up about the moment he found out he had a brain tumour almost two decades ago, and how he broke the news to his then heavily pregnant wife, Sunrise.
Speaking with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on the Smartless podcast on Monday, the actor revealed that he got his diagnosis after a "crazy dream".
“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," he said.
The Oscar nominee said that just before he got the diagnosis, he was supposed to be on set at 4am.
“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 tumour.’ It wasn’t even a voice. It was just pure knowledge: ‘You have a brain tumour, and you have to deal with it immediately’,” he continued.
Despite having no symptoms other than an ear infection, the actor trusted his gut and went to the doctors anyways.
“Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but I had this dream last night that I have a brain tumour," he recalled telling the doctor.
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.’”
Ruffalo then went to the neurologist’s office to read the scan and was shocked to find that his dream was right.
“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,’” he recalled.
The Marvel star added that he waited to tell his then nine-months pregnant wife the news simply because she was so excited to welcome their bub.
“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.’"
And when finally did break the news, his wife initially thought he was joking, "and then she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were going to die young!’”
Fortunately for Ruffalo, the brain tumour turned out to be benign, but the surgery did leave him “totally” deaf in one ear.
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