UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast
Marlow Stern
The Oscar-nominated actor turned Marvel superhero opened up about his role as an investigative journalist in ‘Spotlight’ and where his activist streak comes from.
Mark Ruffalo, the breezy, floppy-haired two-time Oscar nominee from Kenosha, Wisconsin, is what 4chan trolls would refer to as an “SJW,” or Social Justice Warrior. For the uninitiated, it’s a bit of bullshit acronym ammunition employed by the narrow—and feeble—minded to box in those who yearn for a better world. And Ruffalo is one of those people.
Unlike most tight-lipped actors these days, Ruffalo is very outspoken on Twitter and his personal blog, voicing his support for Black Lives Matter, the LGBTQ movement, feminism, anti-fracking, you name it. So it should come as little surprise that the sometime superhero has decided to portray a journalist in the film Spotlight, which made its premiere at the 2015 Venice Film Festival.
Directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent), Ruffalo plays Michael Rezendes, a real-life Boston Globe reporter and member of their elite “Spotlight” investigative journalism unit that helped uncover a sex abuse epidemic within the Boston archdiocese, thrusting the issue of child sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests into the national discourse. For their efforts, which resulted in the conviction of five Catholic priests for child sexual abuse, the Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.