Mark Ruffalo burst movie star's eardrum after months of being 'beaten'

February 01, 2024

Once Mark Ruffalo had to inflict pain on his co-worker for the 2014 Sports drama Foxcatcher but, for Hulk, it was an ‘easy’ job.

The Avengers star Mark Ruffalo snagged an Academy Award nomination for his 2014 movie Foxcatcher, featuring Steve Carell and Channing Tatum. The biopic was based loosely on the life of two 1984 U.S. Olympic gold medalist wrestlers, Mark Schultz and his older brother David, with Mark playing the latter role.

After almost a decade, the 56-year-old celebrity is candidly talking about what it takes to play a wrestler on the screen, which can sometimes mean taking ‘liberty’ to smack his on-screen partner.

Mark Ruffalo did not hesitate to beat the s*** out of Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher

Hollywood icon Mark Ruffalo can go to any length for his films and, if his co-star gives the green light, it ‘may’ get violent. The actor was recently seen talking about all things movies with Robert Downey Junior on the show Hot Ones, reminiscing about his time on set with Channing Tatum.

When he was asked if it was true that Tatum’s eardrum popped while shooting Foxcatcher, Ruffalo recalled, “[Channing] did ask me to slap the s*** out of him, and it was easy to do because he’d beaten the shit out of me so many times.”

An unapologetic Ruffalo went on to share: “It was like four months of learning how to wrestle together. He like has 30 pounds on me, so when it came time to smack the shit out of him, I was like, ‘Came from Alabama.’”

Channing Tatum broke his hand

For Tatum, training for Foxcatcher came with multiple injuries including his eardrums and hands. Talking about the shocking aftermath of his eardrums popping, the Vow actor dished the dirt at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival: “All of a sudden it’s just making a screeching noise. I can’t hear anything. Eardrums heal, so I’m fine.”

Along with eardrums, Tatum also received multiple other injuries while training for the film.

“I’m pretty sure I broke my hand in the movie in the training,” Tatum said at that time. “You’re just throwing bodies around and you get caught in different angles.”

All the injuries and hardcore ‘smacks’ ultimately turned out to be a small price to pay as Foxcatcher went on to snag a total of five Academy Award nominations, including Ruffalo getting nominated for Best Supporting Actor.