In 2013, Ruffalo starred alongside the consistently not very good Keira Knightley in Begin Again, a kind of upbeat version of A Star is Born in which he played a troubled record exec trying to make a star of a singer-songwriter. Lots of people liked it despite the triple ‘oh god no’ elements of Knightley, James Corden and the fact that the main song was performed by Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, and it was nominated for an Oscar.

Ruffalo’s personal taste in music isn’t quite as varied as the roles he takes on, focusing quite heavily on male songwriters with a bit of Oxfordshire indie rock thrown in as he revealed to radio station KCRW. He kicked off a selection of his five favourite songs with Radiohead’s ‘Kid A‘ from the 2000 album of the same name, saying: “I really love this mixture of electronica, and the strange little clicks and noises, and this robotic vocal quality. It had this real kind of melancholy to it. This sort of morph between human and cyborg that the album had, no one had really done that in rock-n-roll up until that point.”

He followed that up with Canadian rock outfit The Besnard Lakes and their tune ‘Because Tonight’, with Ruffalo revealing: “I stumbled across The Besnard Lakes. They came to me in this fever dream and ‘Because Tonight’ felt exactly like what I wanted music in a movie to be. It was just so cinematic.”

Third on Ruffalo’s list was Elliot Smith, the late Nebraskan singer who died tragically young in 2003. Ruffalo picked his tune ‘Between the Bars’, saying: “Elliott Smith has been a big part of me as an actor and an artist. This song was a song that my wife turned me onto when we first started dating.”

Next up was Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ the song from his 1972 album Transformer that referenced several topics considered taboo at the time and went platinum in the UK. Ruffalo said: “I am a great lover of New York City. And this is the anthem to New York City, I think. It has such a great, sort of gritty cast of characters. I think it captures a time in New York. It’s a New York I can only imagine.”

Finally Ruffalo went with Bon Iver’s ‘Skinny Love’ from his seminal ‘sad man in a forest’ album For Emma, Forever Ago, raving: “The story, the melody, his phrasing is so beautiful. He really knows how to take his poetic lines and put them into music. He does something very special that way, with the way he phrases his poetry.”

Mark Ruffalo’s five favourite songs:

• Radiohead – ‘Kid A’
• The Besnard Lakes – ‘Because Tonight’
• Elliot Smith – ‘Between the Bars’
• Lou Reed – ‘Walk on the Wild Side’
• Bon Iver – ‘Skinny Love’

Related Topics