Last year 47 year-old Mark Ruffalo received two Golden Globe nominations: for Best Supporting Actor in a motion picture for his performance on Foxcatcher, and Best Actor in a mini-series or TV movie for his work on The Normal Heart. Now, one year later, Ruffalo has gotten a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his interpretation in the film Infinitely Polar Bear. He’s also in the cast of Spotlight, nominated for Best Picture in the drama category.Born in Wisconsin in 1967 to an Italian-American, working-class family, Ruffalo moved to Virginia in his teens before heading to San Diego, California, where he lived for a short period of time, and Los Angeles to attend the Stella Adler drama school. After landing parts on TV commercials and minor film roles, he made a breakthrough in 2000 with the acclaimed film You Can Count on Me alongside Laura Linney and Matthew Broderick. That same year, he married his partner, the French actress Sunrise Coigney.Ruffalo has had to overcome some speed bumps in life. In 2001, while filming The Last Castle, starring Robert Redford, he found out he had a brain tumor, an acoustic neuroma, behind his left ear. He kept it secret from Coigney, who was about to give birth to the first of their three children, before undergoing surgery. “I was certain I was going to die,” he said. After a surgery, the tumor turned out to be benign.After recovering, Ruffalo showed solid performances in David Fincher's Zodiac in 2007 and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island in 2010. He was also praised that same year for his interpretation as the bohemian sperm donor to Julianne Moore and Annette Bening's lesbian couple in The Kids Are All Right, which secured him a nomination for an Academy Award. “The whole experience of getting close to mortality changed my perspective on work … After the brain tumor happened, I realized I love acting, I've always loved it, I may never get a chance to do it again.”This year, Ruffalo shines again in two movies, Spotlight, nominated for a Golden Globe for best picture – drama, and in Infinitely Polar Bear, a small but powerful Indie picture. Spotlight narrates the true story of reporters investigating the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Their probe exposed more than 70 abusive priests and found the cover-up went all the way to the archbishop of Boston. Mark Ruffalo plays reporter Mike Rezendes, who won a Pulitzer Prize along with the Boston Globe investigative team for their coverage. “This is going to be confrontational, but I also think that movies don’t happen in a vacuum. This movie is coming out at exactly the right moment, with a Pope that can start to address these issues to heal the people who lost their faith and credibility, because why should a Catholic go to church feeling guilty? They feel guilty not just because of what the Priest did, but because the Catholic Church didn’t bring it to justice. I think the church is in a particular spot right now where they can because a lot of people do get comfort from the church and it serves an important purpose in a lot of people’s lives,” says Ruffalo about the topic of his movie, considered one of the best of the year.As for Infinitely Polar Bear, from writer-director Maya Forbes, Ruffalo plays Cameron, a father to two young girls who suffers from manic-depression. When his wife, Maggie (Zoe Saldana), is forced to get a higher level education in another city in order to properly provide for their family, Cameron is tasked with raising his children while she's away. “I just really understood the story. Not only as a father of three myself, but I have mental illness in my family. I have a lot of compassion for those people. I see them struggling, and I thought it was the perfect combination of humor and pathos.”Charismatic, down-to-earth, agreeable and over all, a very talented actor, it is not a surprise that Mark Ruffalo has been invited one more time to join the group of the best in film for the 73^rd edition of the Golden Globe Awards.Mario Amaya