Mark Ruffalo most recently starred in Dark Waters, the true story of Robert Bilott, a lawyer who went from defending corporations to going after DuPont. Celebitchy wrote that Mark was the perfect choice to portray Bilott because he is committed to and passionate about important causes.

One of Mark’s upcoming roles requires him to address another important issue: living with mental illness. Mark is going to play twin brothers, Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, in HBO’s adaptation of Wally Lamb’s 1998 novel, I Know This Much Is True, out this April. Mark spoke during the TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour about the challenge of needing to gain 30 pounds to play Thomas, and being daunted by the responsibility of portraying someone who lives with a mental illness. (In the book, Thomas has paranoid schizophrenia):

[Mark] shot the scenes where he played the other twin Dominic before the scenes with Thomas, where he had to put on the 30 pounds in just a five-week timeframe.

‘When you’re force feeding yourself some of the romance of food leaves,’ Ruffalo stated at the panel, where he was wearing an olive green suit coat and pants with a grey dress shirt.

‘Those five weeks were kind of lonely, I’d been away from my family and (Thomas) hears voices, and I was imaging that life and there was a couple weeks where I was just staying by myself, going down into the heart of this mental illness and studying it,’ Ruffalo said.

The actor revealed he felt a great deal of pressure to get the aspects of mental illness right on camera.

‘There’s an element of mental illness in this project and you want to be as honest as you can to that, and it means a lot to me to be honest to that which means going into that world and getting to know it and getting comfortable with it,’ Ruffalo said.

‘I was really afraid to play it, I think it’s a really an important issue and I want to tell it as honestly as possible, the responsibility of playing it was really apparent to me,’ he added.

[From The Daily Mail]

I can’t imagine how difficult and un-fun it must be for an actor to either need to gain or lose weight quickly for a role. Mark said that “the romance of food” was gone, and I could relate, though for a different reason: Years ago, I had extensive oral surgery, and thought that eating soft foods (like ice cream, yogurt, and mashed potatoes) for a bit would be nice. After Day 3, I was desperate to eat crunchy things again.

I’m always wary when I hear about a movie focused on someone who lives with mental illness: Of course, every experience of a single illness is different for each person who has it, but I always wonder how much research someone (either an author or a screenwriter) did when creating a particular character. I appreciate that Mark took this part of his portrayal of Thomas seriously and didn’t want to lean into harmful stereotypes about people who have been diagnosed with mental illness(es). There aren’t a lot of actors whom I would easily trust to do a great job with a character like Thomas, but Mark is absolutely one of them. This is the first I’m hearing about the project, but I’m so glad that Mark is the star. I’ve loved him since I saw Thirteen Going on 30, but I also love when he takes on roles like the one in Deep Waters. He seems to always take his work (whether acting or activism) seriously, and I respect that so much.

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photos credit: HBO and Getty