Mark Ruffalo ‘I Gave It Everything I Had'

The actor opens up on the toughest role of his career

Talented and successful he may be, but Mark Ruffalo isn’t one to rest on his laurels. So it’s no surprise that the 52-year-old has set the bar high for his latest project: producing for the first time, pulling double duty on screen, and shedding weight for the parts.

“I was a little cavalier about it. I was in my late 40s and I was in the middle of shooting two franchise films, and I was feeling pretty invincible,” the Avengers star tells Collider of getting the miniseries I Know This Much Is True off the ground in 2015. “And then I hit 50 and, of course, I lost all my confidence … I’d bit off way more than I could chew.”

But Ruffalo’s efforts to bring Wally Lamb’s classic 901-page novel to life on the small screen has paid off, with critics calling his performances the best of his career. Directed by Blue Valentine’s Derek Cianfrance, the heart-wrenching story follows middle-aged Dominick (Ruffalo) as he tries to free his identical twin brother Thomas (also played by Ruffalo), a paranoid schizophrenic, from an asylum. Flashbacks to their troubled past show a lifetime of dysfunction and hardship, but ultimately, why the bond between family is often unbreakable.