Laura Dern and Mark Ruffalo: When Mark Met Laura

MR: I think it was when I was a kid. I did a play when I was in high school. I dropped out of wrestling--I didn't do good wrestling my senior year and I joined the drama department and someone broke their arm and I was put into his part. And it was like the first night, and we did the play and I got some laughs and then I just thought, "This is what I want to do. This is amazing."

LD: That's just incredible.

MR: And it was kind of a lark, the whole thing.

LD: That's crazy!

MR: And then I went to my acting teacher. I said, "I'm not too old to be an actor, am I?" You know, like ballerinas [have to begin young]. So she said, "No, you're OK" [laughs]. Did having two parents that were actors help you in launching your own career?

LD: Well, that's actually why your answer is so interesting to me, because it was all around me.

MR: So it was like a fish in water, you didn't know the difference between acting and not acting.

LD: Yeah. I knew I had to do it at 9.

MR: Really?

LD: Oh, yeah. And I was obsessed.

MR: And was it from being on set? I mean, you have two of the great actors as parents.

LD: Yeah, they're great. And I watched the generation that made us all want to become actors, too, in the '70s.

MR: I know!

LD: When I was 7, I had loved horseback riding and I had been back and forth with my mom about getting really serious about riding and competing, and I went to spend my summer vacation with both parents. They were each working on movies--my dad was in California and my mom was in Arizona. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock on Family Plot, and my mom was working with Martin Scorsese on Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore--a very close title [to ours]. And at the end of the summer, I was like, "I've gotta be an actor." I told my mom. She said, "Well, you have to study for the next three years and you can't ride again, ever. You're giving it up, because you have to have one thing you're committed to." And I was watching Hitchcock and Scorsese direct actors, and all those sets were about: use what exists, try stuff, improvise, do whatever, don't worry about the script. It was all that energy. It was just [sighs] so great to watch. So, for me, there was no fluke. It wasn't dependent on wrestling not working out and someone breaking their arm. You wonder, if those things didn't happen, would you have ever become an actor? Was it all sort of weird kismet? It's so odd. I was acting professionally at age 11.

MR: Now, what was your first film part?

LD: First real professional job on my own?

MR: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains?

LD: No, Foxes.

MR: Oh, yeah. I love that movie. It's so cool.

LD: And I just turned 11. So I acted all the way through high school and I left high school six months early to go do a movie.

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