Mark Ruffalo has played his share of on-screen law enforcement agents before in films like Collateral and In the Cut, but he’s never taken on a cop role with the kind of real-life drama as the one he plays in Zodiac, director David Fincher’s chilling, intensely detailed exploration of the hunt for San Francisco’s infamous Zodiac killer.
Ruffalo plays the case’s lead detective Dave Toschi, a cop who’s distinctive personal style influenced a number of fictional performances both before and after the killer came to prominence, including Steve McQueen’s in the 1968 film Bullit and Michael Douglas’ in the ’70s TV series The Streets of San Francisco. But Ruffalo hews closer to the real-life essence of Toschi, who’s involvement in the frustratingly enigmatic and still officially unsolved series of slayings which, as Ruffalo tells Hollywood.com, threatened to overwhelm his personal life and derail his hotshot career as a criminal investigator.
Hollywood.com: How familiar were you with the Zodiac before?
Mark Ruffalo: I’ve heard his name, but I mixed him up with the Hillside Strangler and all the other guys, but he was part of that, those serial killers that you hear about but you don’t really know who they are. That’s as far as it went. Then I picked up that book, the [Robert] Graysmith book. I picked it up tand I started to read it, you know. Wow, this guy’s pretty intense
HW: Did you have to do research on your own?
MR: I actually ended up doing quite a bit of research. The one thing I wanted to do was get together with Dave Toschi. And so I went to San Francisco for a few days and spent some time with him at his work and hanging out with him. And that was a big part of the whole performance, was that time I spent with him. I feel like I owe it to him to be as honest about who he was and what it cost him and what he went through as I can for the movie. And that’s basically what I said to him when I met him. He’s like, “I just don’t know why you’re here to talk to me.” And I said, “I’m here because I want to honor you, man. I want try and be as honest about your life as I possibly can in the context of this film.” I mean, I had to say that to him four or five times, but after a couple of hours, he was very open. You spend a couple of days with somebody, and they start to trust you and then they reveal themselves to you more and more.
HW: Toschi has also been played in other various forms: Steve McQueen in Bullitt was based on him. Did he talk to you about that?
MR: Yeah he’s also kind of a…he had a pop culture sort of iconoclastic career, too. He’s been in front of the cameras. He told me the story about [Steve McQueen]. He’s like, “Oh by the way, [McQueen] didn’t base his character on me. He saw me getting coffee one day and I had my holster on and he just walked over and said ‘Where did you get that holster?’ and that’s really as far as it goes.” But then he brings in his pictures of him and Steve McQueen and Michael Douglas.
HW: Do you see this movie getting under people’s skin?
MR: It’s like the perfect snake eating its own tail. [Director David] Fincher, who became obsessed with this case makes a movie about obsession—about people’s obsession about the case. It just keeps going around and around and around.
HW: Is Fincher obsessive?
MR: Fincher, when he’s working on something, becomes obsessed with it. He wants to know every little detail about it. He is so detailed oriented. Only because he doesn’t want to be the guy who shows up and knows less than anybody else there. He is an incredibly conscientious filmmaker. As far as his work ethic, and I mean I have never worked with him before. But he steeped himself in this material. I mean, we probably came closer to solving this case than anybody has. We had the resources, we had the people, we had the technology. He’ll talk to these cops and they’ll say, “I never knew that.” He’ll spit out pieces and they’re like “I never knew that”—guys that worked on this case, whose whole life was this case.
HW: What about Toschi’s obsessive nature? Could you relate to that?
MR: To Dave? Dave Toschi? Well, I mean sh*t, I’ve been doing this for 20-something years, and you have to be a little obsessed I think to keep going. I don’t relate to it. I don’t have that kind of obsession. I guess I do in my acting and what I want and what I’d like my career to look like and all that, and I keep hammering at it. [The Zodiac killer] was a career defining moment for [Toschi]. And actually when it all blew up in his face it destroyed him and his family.
HW: How about working with Robert Downey Jr.?
MR: He’s amazing. I’ve always been a huge fan of his. We all know where his life has taken him. And here he is, kind of the best Robert Downey Jr. there is. You know, it’s like all of whatever he got from everything he’s done to totally professional with that wit and his razzle dazzle imagination and style and with all that, sober as well. It’s like the best of Robert Downey Jr. And he is so exciting to work with because the guy’s so sensitive. I mean, nothing is the same. Every take is different. I mean the words are the same but the intent, what he does physically, his playfulness. He’s about as good as a dance partner as you can get.
HW: You’ve played a cop a number of times. What’s intriguing to you about that profession?
MR: They’re as close to being bad guys as you can get without being a bad guy so they’re walking a very fine line, you know. And I mean they’re certainly in the realm of good and bad and black and white and all that. So it usually has some dramatic stuff around it. And it isn’t like I choose it. Those are the only jobs they’re offering me. There’s this projection that we like go around like, “Oh yeah, I’ll take that.” No. They’re the only jobs they give you.
HW: Really?
MR: Yes. You’d be surprised how little there is of choosing. And it’s ended up that I’ve been a cop a few times now. That’s how it happened, I don’t know. I’ve been running from cops most of my life. But how that’s happened… How you change those up is actually just going and spending time with these guys. And they’re all different from each other. They all have different styles of policing each city. You know, New York style is different from L.A. which is different from San Francisco. The 70s is different and the people are different. So although I’ve been playing a lot of cops, I hope that they haven’t been all the same performances.
HW: What made you say yes to Zodiac?
MR: The first thing is the calling part of it—David Fincher rang and I jumped at the chance to work with him. Then I pretty much go by the material. That’s pretty much first and foremost. There’s a whole metaphorical side to [Zodiac] about where we are in the world today and about the way we treat evidence and law and presumptions. Sociologically, where we are today in the world because of a lot of presumptions, because we didn’t follow the letter of the law in evidence, because we weren’t as thorough maybe as some of these cops were back then. Then there’s me just playing this guy, this real guy that really took this journey. This is the most procedural police work I’ve done. And it is all about procedure, [Zodiac]. I mean, the other things that I’ve done—like Collateral, which is a much bigger cop conceptual thing—or In the Cut, which is really about a love story. But this is the mostly procedural thing and has its own amount of work and research that goes much deeper.
HW: What are the challenges for you to find characters and find projects that you can really sink your teeth into?
MR: Well, there’s not a lot of great writing you know. What happens now is that there’s, you know, it’s writing by committee and they want—even this movie, the release of this movie, OK? This movie could have been released in November. It stands up with anything that’s out there right now. I think.
HW: I agree.
MR: But because it’s a serial killer movie that they don’t catch the serial killer in the end, everyone’s like freaked out. “What do we do with this movie?” you know? And it’s that sort of mentality that is making the world a much smaller place. It’s just the surer thing, the surer bet, you know. So characters are less interesting, stories are less risky.
HW: Do you consider yourself a cynic?
MR: Listen. Not only is that glass half empty, it’s also a little glass.