Mark Ruffalohas had a number of memorable roles in his time in Hollywood.
Despite his high profile, Ruffalo also seems to be one of Hollywood’s more easygoing, unproblematic stars.
Like any of us, Ruffalo has had his share of hardship.
And when it comes to health issues, Ruffalo has faced more problems than you might guess.
He first realized he had one (or might have one) after dreaming about it.
“It wasn’t even a voice,” the actor said about his dream on “SmartLess.”
Not just pregnant, but due at any moment.
The tumor was removed in its entirety, so it could be deemed successful in that regard.
However, that doesn’t mean that everything went entirely smoothly.
It turns out that Ruffalo’s heart had stopped temporarily during the procedure.
But that wasn’t all that happened after the tumor was taken out.
And I couldn’t even close my eye.
I looked terrible," he toldNPR.
Ruffalo learned a lot from the entire experience.
It “made me grateful,” Ruffalo explained to NPR, “It made me compassionate.
It made me aware of loss.
It made me aware of how fragile life is.”
Ruffalo had his own issues with anger management when he was a teenager.
“That anger, that unexpressed anger, as nice as I might seem […].
It was something that he said went back through his teen years and even before.
Some of that anger seems to have continued into his young adulthood.
His depression persisted, not helped by being a young actor who wasn’t getting work.
His life changed after a friend of his died by suicide in 1994.
That doesn’t mean that Ruffalo flipped a switch in his brain and all his depression went away.
Instead, as he told theObserverin 2015, he has “dysthymia.
It’s a long running, low-grade depression all the time.
I’ve been struggling with that my whole life.”
Dysthymia may also be referred to as “persistent depressive disorder,” according toJohn Hopkins Medicine.
