Do you have any idea how much I love Mark Ruffalo? So, so much. I’ve loved him since the first film I ever saw him in – You Can Count on Me. That was more than a decade ago, and his films are at times hit or miss, but I never hold it against him. He just brings me joy, because he’s a really talented actor, he’s cute as a button, and he seems like a genuinely sweet man. Anyway, Mark has two major interviews out this week, the biggest being this cover of Details! Can you believe it? After years of toiling in the industry, doing consistently good work, and winning the respect of his peers, Mark is finally a cover boy for a major magazine? Isn’t that awesome? Anyway, if you’d like to see his Details photo shoot, go here, and if you’d like to read the whole Details piece, go here. Here are some highlights:

Mark Ruffalo appears on the May cover of DETAILS magazine in a photo shoot with Matthias Vriens-McGrath that took place in New York City. Disgusted with Hollywood and mourning the loss of his brother, Ruffalo quit acting (again) for his hideaway in upstate New York. But a funny thing happened on the way to irrelevance—the movie he thought would be his last earned him an Oscar nomination and made him a bona fide leading man. Now the 43-year-old in-demand actor is making his long-awaited directorial debut with this month’s Sympathy for Delicious and suiting up to be the next Hulk. Strange how busy retirement can be. “You don’t interview Mark Ruffalo—you converse with him,” said writer Jonathan Miles. “The standard Hollywood ego is nowhere to be found. By the end of the interview we were just talking fishing and politics like every other guy in the bar.”

On quitting acting in 2009: “I’d had it with L.A., and I really had it with the business side of acting, the machinery of it all. You’re an artist, but then all of a sudden you’re a product at the same time, and there’s this company that’s sprung up around you. I got depressed. I was losing my love for it. So I said, ‘I’m done.’ I fired everybody and moved my family out here (Callicoon, NY). I had to make a radical move.” He goes on to say, “The Kids Are Alright was my swan song. I didn’t know what I was doing next.”

On struggling to make it as an actor: “It was brutal. The years are stripping away, but when you talking to anyone from home, you’re saying something like ‘Well, I’m just working on my craft right now,’ when the truth is that I can’t get a fucking job because no one will hire me. It was humiliating.”

On deciding to continue acting: What brought Ruffalo back this latest time was sitting in the audience at Sundance, where The Kids Are Alright made its debut in 2010, and, after the first peal of laughter, “watching everyone’s jaded, supercool Hollywood identities melt into the communal experience of filmmaking and storytelling. It reminded me: I’m an actor, and my whole life has been geared towards being an actor.”

On acting in The Avengers, a computer-generated style movie: Ruffalo makes the counterintuitive connection between motion-capture acting and the theater. “It’s the absolute perfect marriage because it relies on your imagination, your ability to project outside of yourself, to be the watcher and the watched. A stage actor has to be able to do that, because you’re telling the story with your body as much as your face and voice.”

On not training to be The Incredible Hulk: “No, no, no. Look, I’m eating guacamole and potato chips….You think Tom Cruise does this?”

[From Details]

He sounds really good, and I would definitely recommend reading the whole Details article. The problem is that he’s just so nice and sweet and professional, there aren’t any juicy, eye-rolling quotes.

Mark also did a big interview with The Advocate, which came out earlier this week. It’s mostly about his career and his involvement with LGBT issues and why he feels so strongly about human rights issues. The full interview is here, and here are a few highlights:

Why have you taken such a personal interest in gay rights?
We have a lot of friends who are gay couples with kids. When my son would go to his friend’s house down the street, where his friend’s parents are a married gay couple, not once did he come home and say, “Why does he have two papas?” That didn’t occur to him, because their house is no different from ours. I’ve seen the human face of the issue, I’ve seen the pain gay couples are going through, so it was important for me to add my voice to the fight. Fortunately, my voice reaches much further than a lot of people’s. I was trained as an actor that we have a responsibility in our community to stand up for what we believe in and to use our voice and our art to teach people and push those beliefs.

Why don’t more celebrities show your level of support?
Throughout history, it’s always been the artists who express progressive views, and there has always been an attack on artists who speak out against culture wars and military actions. I’ve seen the right-wing media campaign to discredit people who speak out against their agendas, and it’s been chillingly effective. I’ve seen it happen with the war in Iraq and I’m seeing it happen with marriage equality.

Up through 2005, you’d periodically appear in light rom-coms like Just Like Heaven, Rumor Has It…, and 13 Going on 30. Now that you’ve gotten an Oscar nomination, are those days officially over?
I don’t know. I’ve found that rom-coms are rarely romantic, rarely comedic, and rarely a combination of both in a satisfying way. But I liked those movies I did because they were funny, but they had nice messages and real heart at the same time. Lately, I just haven’t had many rom-com scripts come across my desk that I thought were really good.

[From The Advocate]

He also talked about being hired to play AIDS activist Ned Weeks in the upcoming Ryan Murphy film The Normal Heart. Mark said something rather beautiful about playing the real-life gay man, and it actually made me stop in my tracks and say “Damn, he has a point.” Mark was saying that he didn’t want to play this gay character at first because he thought that a gay actor should take the role. When asked why a gay actor should take it, Mark said: “It just should be. It’s time. At what point did they finally let an African American play an African American? There comes a time in our culture when Marlon Brando shouldn’t be playing a Japanese guy.” That’s an interesting way of thinking isn’t it? I love him.

Photos courtesy of Details’ slideshow.