Mark Ruffalo ‘couldn’t afford a car’ when he first came to Hollywood

Mark Ruffalo wasn’t always a household name headlining Marvel movies and Oscar nominees alike.

Indeed, in a recent appearance on the “SmartLess” podcast the Academy Award-nominated actor said he spent the better part of a decade driving around Los Angeles on a dirt bike because buying a car was too expensive.

Ruffalo said that as a young man trying to make it in Hollywood, he had to find ways to stretch his income from bartending. He drove a 1974 Honda XR250 because it cost him only $250 and “I could personally work on [it] when it broke down.”

“I couldn’t afford a car,” he told the hosts. “That was the only way I could get around LA.”

On top of that, his living quarters weren’t much more luxurious than his ride.

“I was living in a closet for $200 a month,” he added. “My whole nut was about $300 a month.”

The four-time Academy Award nominee said he spent so much time just barely scraping by before he finally got his big break that he can’t explain why he didn’t quit.

“It was a very slow progression,” he said. “There’s really no reason that I should have tried as long as I did, because that was from 18 to 28.”

Ruffalo’s career began to pick up as he neared 30, appearing in four films in 1996 and becoming a rom com staple in the early 2000s.

He has since been nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor, most recently for his performance in Best Picture nominee “Poor Things”.

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