Did you know Mark Ruffalo started his acting career at a Jimmy Swaggart revival service? Well, sort of.
On NPR’s Fresh Air podcast this week, Ruffalo talked about growing up in a multi-faith household and a particularly formative experience he had as a child attending a revival service put on by Jimmy Swaggart at an Assemblies of God church in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“My family was Italian Catholics,” he said. “Then my mom and her mother became evangelicals during the First Assembly of God/Pentecostal/Jimmy Swaggart era. And my dad split off completely in a whole other direction into the Baha’i faith.”
“My grandmother, for her birthday, asked me to be saved. And I was like, ‘Saved from what? I’m eight. I haven’t even gotten to do anything yet, really,'” Ruffalo joked.
“But [she said], ‘The second you come through the birth canal, you’ve sinned. That’s the original sin,'” he continued. ‘And I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, OK. Oh, yeah, makes sense to me. I’ll do whatever you want, Grandma.'”
The (pre-scandal) televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was leading revival services at their church. During the service, Swaggart held an altar call for the kids and Ruffalo’s grandmother urged him to go to the front:
“I’m walking down there [thinking] I want to be saved. I mean, I don’t want to go to hell, and it’s going to make my grandma happy. But man, it is so intense down here and it’s so sweaty and everyone’s talking in different languages. So I got down there and we’re lined up. Each kid is getting prayed on and then they’re falling down or falling over. And I was like, ‘I’m not feeling it.’ Then finally I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m not going to be the one who doesn’t get Jesus today. No, not me. Nuh-uh.’ And I just kind of went with it.”
So, the Marvel star took a dive and fell on his knees, acting like he had been “struck down by the spirit of the Lord.” It wasn’t until he returned to his seat that he felt guilty about faking his experience. His grandmother asked if he “felt it,” and Ruffalo acted as if he truly did.
“Oh, God, I felt so ashamed,” he said. “Everyone here is feeling so much and I didn’t feel anything… What that sets up in you at so early an age is so difficult for your ongoing relationship. It became this thing that was always there that I didn’t understand. Now I do, but I didn’t then. It was just a shameful feeling.”
Ruffalo shared with The Hollywood Reporter that his experience growing up in that church scene helped lead him into acting.
“That was really my first acting gig,” he said.
You can listen to Ruffalo tell the full story on Fresh Air starting at 24:28.
