Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo went down the memory lane in a recent interview as he recalled his beginning times as an actor. Speaking at a podcast, the Academy Award-nominated actor revealed that he was living in a closet for $200 and he spent almost a decade driving around Los Angeles on a dirt bike because he could not afford a car. 

Mark Ruffalo takes a walk down the memory lane

Speaking of his humble beginnings, the actor said, "I couldn't afford a car. I had a $250 1974 Honda XR250 that I could personally work on when it broke down that was the only way I could get around LA. I was living in a closet for $200. My whole nut was about $300 a month.” Speaking about his journey, he said, "It was a very slow progression. There's really no reason that I should have tried as long as I did because that was from 18 to 28."

Ruffalo was fired from the play that would have been his big break. The actor recalled,  "All I know is my big break was a play with Holly Hunter and Carole Caine and Bill Pullman. It was the hot thing in Los Angeles at the time. It was those people. Holly had already won the Academy Award and Carole was huge and Bill was huge. It was at the Met Theatre."

"They started their own theatre, it was in the early 90s, and that was gonna be my big break, and I was of course fired four days before we opened. A stagehand fired me because Beth Henley was the director, but she just couldn't bring herself to fire me,” he revealed. 

Mark Ruffalo opens up about brain tumour diagnosis

Meanwhile, earlier, Ruffalo revealed that he found out that he had a brain tumor more than 20 years ago when his wife was nine months pregnant with their first child. This is when he decided to wait until the boy's birth to break the news of his condition. The actor found out he was suffering from a benign vestibular schwannoma in 2001. The actor further revealed that a week after their baby was born he had to meet with the neurologist to decide what he was going to do.

With inputs from IANS