Mark Ruffalo woke up in the middle of the night in 2001 after dreaming that he had a brain tumor, with a certainty he could not explain: he had to get it checked immediately.
It was not a voice, he says, it was pure knowledge. He was filming The Last Castle alongside Robert Redford and James Gandolfini, his wife Sunrise Coigney was about to give birth to their first child, and the only thing he had felt the night before was a simple ear infection. Nothing to justify the fear he felt. He asked a doctor on set for a scan that same day.
The scan revealed a golf ball-sized mass behind his left ear: a vestibular schwannoma. He hid the diagnosis from his pregnant wife for two weeks, underwent surgery with a 20% risk of being left with facial paralysis and, although he suffered temporary facial paralysis after the procedure, he managed to recover over time. However, he lost hearing in his left ear forever. The dream, he says, saved his life.