For those outside the acting industry it probably looks easy, but what isn’t easy is finding work. This is proven by Mark Ruffalo’s interview in Interview magazine. Here is a highlight:

“In 2000, playwright-cum filmmaker-Kenneth Lonergan’s quirky little sibling drama You Can Count on Me broke out of the festival circuit and went on to be nominated for two Academy Awards (for screenplay and for actress Laura Linney’s star turn). Its success was powered, in part, by the electric performance of a virtually unknown 32-year-old leading man. By the time he booked the part, Mark Ruffalo had already given up on acting at least once, in the mid-’90s, heading home to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to work for his commercial-painter father. But he came back, again and again—auditioning, he once said, 800 times without booking a single role.”

Wow. That is impressive perseverance. Ruffalo also had to deal with his brother being murdered and having a benign brain tumor removed.

Mark Ruffalo is an amazing actor and I am just happy he kept at it. Read the amazing interview, he is interviewed by Julia Roberts and on a shameless self-promotion note: If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon.