Ruffalo wasn’t seeking out romantic comedies when he received the script for one of his more popular pre-Marvel movies, “13 Going on 30.” It seems that his wife, Sunrise Coigney, whom he married in 2000, was the one to encourage him to try out a love story. His doubts were assuaged by a few words from the film’s director. Ruffalo said:
“I never saw myself in a rom com. It was really Sunrise. She was like ‘You need to do a rom com. You’re actually funny and I think you’re hot, and they’re asking you to do one.’ This director Gary Winnick — who I knew from the scene in New York — came to me with the script [for ‘13 Going on 30′] and said ‘It’s a rom-com, but let’s approach it like we’re making an important indie movie with a message.’ We really talked about what that script was about, and the message that we wanted to give; an important message about innocence, about how you treat people. It was just very elevated.”
The film may be frothy and light and funny, but Ruffalo liked that it had some adult underpinnings. “13 Going on 30” was, however, a pretty big hit, making almost $97 million on a $37 million budget. Because it attracted so many eyeballs, Ruffalo was soon given more scripts for rom-coms … and became increasingly disliked by the Hollywood establishment in the process. He was a soulful, indie-style actor in mainstream pop flicks. He was hardly a leading man, and the studios wanted nothing to do with him.
Ruffalo admitted that appearing in comedies like “Just Like Heaven” and “View from the Top” was “a rebellion” of everything he had done before. It was a mere taste of the mainstream.
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