Mark Ruffalo, the acclaimed Hollywood star and currently a top contender for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards, has shared a chilling experience that transcended the boundaries of nightmares and thrust him into a stark reality. In a recent episode of the Smartless podcast, Ruffalo revealed details about his diagnosis of a brain tumor and the unconventional circumstances surrounding its discovery.
Mark Ruffalo Recalled Being Diagnosed With Brain Tumor
Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo recently shared a chilling experience he had over 20 years ago. During his recent appearance on the Smartless podcast, the actor recalled the incident that happened when he was working on the 2001 film The Last Castle.
He explained that he woke up around 3 A.M. for a pre-dawn call to be on the set when he had an eerie dream. “It wasn’t like any other dream I ever had,” he said, explaining, “It was just like, ‘You have a brain tumor.’ It wasn’t even a voice. It was just pure knowledge.” Ruffalo recalled having a feeling that said, “You have a brain tumor, and you have to deal with it immediately.”
The Poor Things actor shared that he had no noticeable symptoms, apart from an ear infection, but he still decided to share his dream with the cast doctor. The doctor assured him that there was no likely reason for him to worry and suggested going through a CAT scan just to ease Ruffalo’s concerns.
To everyone’s surprise, the scan revealed that Ruffalo’s intuition was not unfounded, revealing a golf ball-sized mass behind his left ear. “You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball,” Ruffalo recalled the doctor telling him after the scan. Further into the conversation, he shared that he couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife about the diagnosis, who was pregnant at the time.
Mark Ruffalo Could Not Tell His Wife About the Diagnosis
Mark Ruffalo expressed that the hardest part of the ordeal was revealing the news to his pregnant wife, Sunrise Coigney. He was hesitant to interrupt her carefully planned birth experience and waited until a week after the birth of their son, Keen, to reveal the diagnosis.
“I hadn’t told her until the night before,” he shared. However, when he told her about the tumor, Coigney initially thought he was joking and later “just burst into tears.” Although the tumor turned out to be benign, the actor faced a 20% chance of damaging a facial nerve and a 70% chance of losing his hearing during the medical intervention. While the paralysis eventually subsided after a year, the lasting effect included ongoing deafness in one ear for the Oscar-nominated actor.
