Oscar nominated Mark Ruffalo recalls 2001 brain tumour diagnosis

Mark Ruffalo has opened up about his brain tumour diagnosis in 2001. Photo / Getty Images

Mark Ruffalo was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2001 when his wife was nine months pregnant with their first child.

The Marvel star who received an Oscar nomination yesterday for his role in Poor Things, has opened up about his terrifying medical diagnosis 23 years ago revealing his wife, Sunrise ‘Sunny’ Coigney thought he was joking when he first told her about it.

Appearing on the Smartless podcast, the 56-year-old actor told co-hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, that when he broke the news of his potentially fatal condition to his partner it was only a few days after she gave birth to their first child Keen, who is now 22.

“When I told Sunny about it, at first she thought I was joking, and then she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were gonna die young’.”

Ruffalo said he made the decision to wait until after the boy’s birth to break the news of his condition, “I was just like, ‘I can’t,’ she’s already like, ‘Oh God, him again, does everything gotta be about him?’” adding, “And so I just couldn’t.”

The news came as Sunrise Coigney and Mark Ruffalo were about to welcome their first child into the world. Photo / Getty Images

The actor also said a week after his baby arrived he had to meet a neurologist and figure out a plan for his treatment, so he told Coigney the night before his appointment.

Admitting he was one week out from wrapping The Last Castle with [James] Gandolfini and Robert Redford, he found out he was suffering a benign vestibular schwannoma after he had an “intense” dream that he had a brain tumour.

Ruffalo said: “I woke up probably around 3am, and I just had this crazy dream, and it wasn’t like any other dream I ever had.

“It was just like, you have a brain tumour, and it wasn’t even a voice it was just pure knowledge – you have a brain tumour, and you have to deal with it immediately.”

Ruffalo had no symptoms except for an ear infection before the tumour was diagnosed when he went to the doctor for a CT scan.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in a scene from Poor Things. Both stars have received Oscar nominations for their performances. Photo / AP

He added: “The nurse calls the doctor up, I could hear them talking in the other room. She comes in, she’s kinda like a zombie 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’s biopsied.’”

Even though the tumour was benign, the star had a surgery to remove the mass that left him deaf in his left ear.

He said: “[I am] completely deaf in one ear, and when I woke up, the left side of my face was totally paralysed. I couldn’t even close my eye. I was talking out the side of my mouth.”

Ruffalo’s paralysis disappeared after around a year, but he still suffers hearing loss.

Along with Keen, the actor has two other children with his wife, who he married in 2000 – daughters Bella, 18, and 16-year-old Odette.

- Additional reporting by NZ Herald