Mark Ruffalo Admits He Was Scared to Play the Hulk, But an Avengers Co-Star Convinced Him

Now eight years after Mark Ruffalo stepped into the role of Bruce Banner for Marvel's The Avengers it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (even though Ruffalo was one of the many replacements in the franchise). The actor, at that point known for appearing in movies like Zodiac, 13 Going on 30, and The Kids Are All Right, had to be convinced to join the franchise and in a new interview has revealed the forces at work inside Marvel that got him to agree to the part (including doing something that Marvel Studios likely didn't know about).

"I was scared," Ruffalo told Jimmy Fallon in the latest episode of The Tonight Show (H/T PEOPLE). "I didn't know what I could add to what I already thought had been done so well before me. I'd only been doing indie movies up 'til that point. So I was like, 'I don't know if I'm the right person for this.' And Joss Whedon's like, 'Yeah, you are the right person.' And then I got a call from Downey, it must've made it to him that I was hemming and hawing, and he just simply said, 'Ruffalo, let's go. We got this,' in true Iron Man fashion. And then after that, I was like, 'I guess I have to do it.'"

Ruffalo went on to reveal that one of the big hurdles for him that held him up in signing onto the film was that Marvel Studios wouldn't show him the script. Lucky for him, one person involved wanted him in the movie bad enough that they would go around Marvel to show him the material.

"I made a promise when I was a young actor that I would never do another movie without reading a script beforehand, because it's a recipe for disaster," Ruffalo added. "And so I was like, 'I need to read something,' and the studio was like, 'We're sorry, we don't give anything out.' And Joss, was like, 'Here man, here's like 20 pages of what I have written of Banner,' and I read that first scene of when Scarlett [Johansson], when Black Widow finds Banner in India, and I was like, 'Okay, I love this. This is amazing.'"

It's unclear when Ruffalo will make his next appearance as the character but previously confirmed that "There's some talk of having Banner/Hulk show up in She–Hulk." The new Marvel Studios series is in development for the Disney+ streaming platform and scripts for the series have already been completed.