Mark Ruffalo Wore A Butt Pad To Plump Up His Dumper For Poor Things
The world of "Poor Things" is a cornucopia of zany imagery and the costumes are no exception. The clothes themselves tell a story, and the silhouettes are crucial in creating this whimsical imagery. However, some of these elegant shapes were created using rather inelegant methods.
Mark Ruffalo stars in Yorgos Lanthimos' newest film as a fun-loving lawyer named Wedderburn who falls in love with a mad scientist's latest experiment, Bella (played brilliantly by Emma Stone), and runs away with her. The actor describes his eccentric character as "a bon vivant, a total egoist, and megalomaniac" in an interview with Indiewire. Ruffalo might be playing a romantic hero in the film, but Wedderburn is far from a traditional leading man. Even his backside is unconventional — so much so that it required a bit of movie magic. To achieve his cartoonish look, Ruffalo had to wear a butt pad while shooting "Poor Things," or so he admitted in a recent interview with Variety. "Do you know I had an a** pad in?" he asked his "Avengers" co-star Robert Downey, Jr.
Ruffalo explained that his legs and calves were around four inches bigger and he wore a corset with shoulder pads to deliver a specific silhouette for the character. "He wanted me to look like a bird, so I had this whole built-out chest piece that never made it because it was just too much," he said. "But the big ass pads, the leg pads, the thigh pads, the calf pads, those were all playing."
Poor Things was full of unconventional silhouettes
It might seem like an eccentric step to put Ruffalo in butt pads, but the outlandish costumes in "Poor Things" were all made by coloring outside the lines, much like the newly minted protagonist who is discovering life and sensuality all at once and for the very first time. Lanthimos and costume designer Holly Waddington chose to imbue the costumes with the protagonist's off-beat subjectivity rather than remain faithful to naturalism. That included detouring from the period accuracy established in the reference text, a sci-fi novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray.
"[...] the book takes place in the late-19th century," Lanthimos explained in an interview with Vogue, "but at the same time, it's kind of an open, unknown period, because there are a lot of elements in it — from technology to costumes — that are not loyal to the period, and feel almost futuristic. We looked at materials they used in the '70s and thought about how they would work in a costume, from latex to plastic to all sorts of things."
Unconventional was the name of the game when it came to costuming "Poor Things." For example, one of Bella's costumes early on in the film includes a bustle cage made of paper silk that was inspired by a Moncler puffer jacket, Waddington revealed to British Vogue. Every costuming choice was so far outside the box that Ruffalo's butt pads start to seem completely normal.
Ruffalo isn't the only Avenger whose worn butt pads for a role
"Poor Things" might have been the first time in Ruffalo's long career that he ended up in butt pads, but it might not be the last. This odd invisible accessory is a lot more common than you might think. Some of Hollywood's biggest stars have worn butt pads for their roles, including Anne Hathaway in "The Devil Wears Prada" and Penelope Cruz in "Volver."
However, a lot of the stars that have donned butt pads onscreen are actually men, not women. Even Ruffalo's "Avengers" co-star Chris Evans reportedly wore butt pads under his Captain America costume. And Evans isn't the only member of the Marvel cinematic universe with synthetic cheeks — Paul Bettany, who plays Vision, was crafted the "perfect android a**" by the props department for the Disney+ series "WandaSision" (via KFC Radio).
Most of the aforementioned butt pads were worn for a natural-looking aesthetic enhancement, but Ruffalo's pads were intended to look ridiculous. His body — both real and augmented — was used to serve the physical comedy in "Poor Things."
His body was part of the film's physical comedy
Sometimes prioritizing slapstick meant sacrificing a bit of dignity, especially when it came to the film's graphic sex scenes. Bella's sexual exploration with Wedderburn is a huge component of "Poor Things," and provides the film with some of its funniest and most heartfelt moments. However, even after all his years of experience, Ruffalo was a bit afraid of appearing naked on camera.
"I was like, 'Do I have to?'" he recalled, per Variety. "All I can hear is, 'Nobody wants to see your old a** anymore. Maybe you shouldn't be doing movies like that anymore.' [...] I mean, it's my least favorite part of it, but I also saw it as an extension of the physical comedy that we were already finding. So it was just another way to tell the story."
Even though being shirtless is par for the course in Marvel movies, Ruffalo never enjoyed showing off his superhero body — nor did he relish the regimen required to maintain it. His "Avengers" co-star Downey, Jr. remembers that as soon as Ruffalo was done shooting his shirtless scenes, he'd say, "'Oh, can I please stop dieting and working out now?'"
Part of being a great actor is sacrificing vanity for the sake of the project. Whether that means wearing butt pads under your clothes or wearing no clothes at all, Ruffalo's dedication to "Poor Things" was worth the discomfort. But with filming over, the worst part is behind him — pun very much intended.