Mark Ruffalo Starts Training for ‘Hulk’: I’m Not Going to Be Buff

In July this year, it was officially announced that Mark Ruffalo would be taking over Edward Norton on “Hulk” duties, as Norton would not be reprising his part. E! Online spoke to Mark about what he’s doing to get in shape.

Since this is The Hulk we’re talking about, one may easily imagine the actor playing him will have to be really muscular and big. Not necessarily so, says Mark.

E! caught up with the star at the recent GQ Men of the Year awards and, as it turns out, he was more than happy to share a few things about the workout routine and diet he will probably start very soon.

First things first, though, Mark says that “They want me mean and lean, but they don’t want me big and buff,” so he won’t be building too much muscle mass.

However, since he will be putting a lot of effort into getting in shape as well, that means he won’t be sticking to a restrictive diet, let alone count calories.

“Forget that,” he says of the much-dreaded practice of calorie counting. “I gotta keep building and building and building. You have to eat to build muscle,” he adds.

For workouts, he’ll probably turn to Pilates, tai kwon do and perhaps even some gymnastics to get into what E! calls “superhero shape.”

If anything, Ruffalo is not a stranger to the things he must do to get in shape for a part before production starts, he stresses for the same media outlet.

“I was a wrestler,” he mentions. “I’m used to starving myself. It’s easy for me. The last two weeks you just walk around spitting into a cup,” Mark adds.

In an interview of earlier this year, when Ruffalo spoke for the first time about taking on The Hulk – from Norton, nonetheless, who happens to be a close friend of his – he promised fans he’d do his best to do justice to the character’s dual nature.

“He’s a guy struggling with two sides of himself – the dark and the light – and everything he does in his life is filtered through issues of control. I grew up on the Bill Bixby TV series, which I thought was a really nuanced and real human way to look at The Hulk. I like that the part has those qualities,” he said, as we also informed you at the time.