Mark Ruffalo Reveals He Learnt About His Brain Tumor From A 'Crazy' Dream

Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo, known for his powerful performances and deeply emotional roles, had a life-changing experience in 2001 that was both eerie and miraculous. At the height of his rising career, Ruffalo had a bizarre dream that led him to discover a serious health condition– a brain tumor. This revelation, which seems more like a plot from one of his movies, became a reality that changed his life forever. Ruffalo was in the middle of filming The Last Castle, a prominent moment in his career. During a podcast he shared, “I had one of those 4 a.m. calls, and I woke up probably around 3, and I just had this crazy dream. It wasn’t like any other dream I had. It was just like ‘You have a brain tumor.’ It wasn’t even a voice, it was just pure knowledge: ‘You have a brain tumor, and you have to deal with it immediately.’”

As per EW, despite having no symptoms other than a mild ear infection, the dream left him with a deep, unsettling conviction. The next day, Ruffalo mentioned the dream to the on-set doctor, expecting to be dismissed as paranoid. He said, “I said, ‘Listen, this is gonna sound crazy, but I had this dream last night that I have a brain tumor,’ And she said, ‘That is crazy, but there’s no reason that you should have to worry about it, I’ll order you a CAT scan and we’ll go right after work today and we’ll show how crazy you are.’”

However, the results were far from reassuring. The doctor revealed, “You have a mass behind your left ear the size of a golf ball, and yeah, we don’t know what it is, we can’t tell until it’s biopsied.” At just 33 years old and with his wife, Sunrise Coigney, expecting their first child, Ruffalo found himself facing a terrible diagnosis. He remarked, "I didn't tell Sunny because I know she had the birth plan, she did the yoga, she had the doula. You know we had the hot tub ordered," as reported by Scoop Upworthy.

He further added,  “I was just like, I can’t. She’s already like, ‘Oh god, him again? Does everything gotta be about him?’ So I just couldn’t. And like a week after the baby I had to go in and meet the neurologist and decide what I was gonna do. I hadn’t told her until the night before.” When he finally shared the news with Coigney, Ruffalo revealed,  “When I told Sunny about it, first she thought I was joking, and she just burst into tears and said, ‘I always knew you were gonna die young!’ If you wrote it in a script, it’d be too much.”

The surgery to remove the tumor was successful, but it left Ruffalo with the left side of his face paralyzed and permanently deaf in his left ear. He said, “They said I had a 20% chance of nicking my nerve on the left side of my face and killing it, and then I had 70% chance of losing my hearing, which went…Take my hearing. Let me keep the face. Just let me be the father to this kid."