Christopher Thornton as “Dean O’Dwyer” in SYMPATHY FOR DELICIOUS.

PLANET: It took a long time to bring this story to the screen, did you ever think it wouldn’t happen?
Ruffalo: There were many times along the way that I thought it wasn’t going to happen. The movie kept coming together and falling apart, which I guess a lot of independents go through. But that’s really soul crushing; you think it’s going to finally happen and for whatever reason, the money goes away or somebody falls out of it or whatever…. When we started working on this I don’t even think I was actually able to support myself as an actor. I was just starting to get work. I was still bartending and over that time period many things had happened. I had my own brain tumor. And the struggle of our lives, Chris’ and my own, started to seep their way into the script… about redemption and looking for faith and trying to make meaning of really meaningless things and so it was a strange. There was this collaboration going on throughout those 10 years of rewrites. What I like to say about the movie is, “none of it happened, but it’s all true.”

Was directing everything you imagined it to be?
I was scared, you know. Once I got over the trepidation and fear and self-loathing (laughs), I really loved it. I realized that I had actually learned something in all those years that I’d been on sets with really great directors. I hope it’s something that they’ll allow me to keep doing. It felt much easier for me than acting does to be completely frank with you.