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While speaking to the SmartLess podcast, actor Mark Ruffalo revealed how he dreamt about a brain tumor that turned out to be true. While speaking to the podcast, the actor shared details about his health scare more than two decades ago and his present hearing issue from it.
The SmartLess podcast is run by actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. The hilarious podcast brings a new guest to each episode and shares a thoughtful and organic conversation with them. In the one-hour-thirteen-minute episode released on January 22, 2024, Ruffalo shared many of his experiences with the three hosts.
On the work front, the talented actor was widely appreciated for his role in the recently released Poor Things, besides being on a Netflix miniseries. He is known for playing The Hulk in the Avengers series and other MCU productions.
Mark Ruffalo had an unusual dream about a brain tumor
As Mark Ruffalo said in his interview with the SmartLess podcast, the actor revealed the bizarre way he came to know about his medical problem through a dream about a brain tumor. It was 2001, and the actor was shooting for James Gandolfini and Robert Redford’s The Last Castle.
“I had one of those 4 am calls, and I woke up probably around 3, and I just had this crazy dream. It wasn’t like any other dream I had had. It was just like ‘You have a brain tumor.’ It wasn’t even a voice, it was just pure knowledge: ‘You have a brain tumor, and you have to deal with it immediately.’”
On the personal front, the Dark Waters actor was awaiting the birth of his first child, due in a couple of days. One night, he had a bizarre dream where he seemed to have prior knowledge about having a brain tumor.
He claimed he was rattled after waking up, despite having no other symptoms except a past ear infection. However, a sense of doom led him to visit a doctor. After a scan and some discussions, the doctor informed Ruffalo about a golf ball-sized mass behind his left ear, for which they suggested a biopsy. Speaking about the doctor’s reaction, he said,
“And she says, ‘You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball, and we don’t know what it is. We can’t tell until it is biopsied.”
Though he wanted to tell his wife, Sunrise Coigney, he refrained from informing her right away since she was pregnant. Mark didn’t want to break the bad news to her at the moment. However, he went ahead with the biopsy, which proved the tumor to be benign.
Mark Ruffalo’s surgery posed chances of nerve damage
After learning that his tumor was benign, Mark Ruffalo prepared to meet a neurologist to work out his treatment plan. By this time, his wife had delivered, and the baby was a week old. The Poor Things actor disclosed his condition to his wife. He told SmartLess:
“When I told Sunny about it, first she thought I was joking. And then she burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were gonna die young.’”
Mark Ruffalo was suggested surgery to remove the mass. Before the surgery, he was informed by the medical team about the risks of the procedure. The surgical removal of the tissue carried a 20% chance of damaging the nerve on the left side of his face, causing facial paralysis. On the other hand, there was a 70% chance of loss of hearing in his left ear.
The actor thought about his child before surgery and prayed for hearing loss rather than facial paralysis, as he told the podcast:
“Take my hearing, but let me keep the face, and just let me be the father to this kid.”
The couple later welcomed two daughters, Bella Noche and Odette.
Post-surgery, Ruffalo has a complete hearing impairment in his left ear. He did suffer facial paralysis on the left side, which resolved itself within a year.
What are Mark Ruffalo's recent and upcoming projects?
On the career front, the actor has achieved acclaim, with four Oscar nominations under his belt. 2022 saw him in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Netflix’s The Adam Project.
In 2023, he was seen in Poor Things with Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was also seen in Netflix’s adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See, released in November 2023, in the role of Daniel LeBlanc.
He will be next seen in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, opposite Robert Pattinson, Toni Colette, and Steven Yeun. Mark Ruffalo will be portraying Hieronymous Marshall in the science fiction movie based on a novel by Edward Ashton.
Watch out for Mark Ruffalo’s upcoming movie Mickey 17 by Warner Bros. to arrive in theaters on March 29, 2024.
