Mark Ruffalo Stars as Bipolar Dad in “Infinitely Polar Bear”

ABC/Randy Holmes(NEW YORK) — Mark Ruffalo portrays a person living with mental illness in the new film comedy, Infinitely Polar Bear.

“It’s a movie about a bipolar father raising his two mixed-race daughters in the 70s on his own, while his wife goes out to basically get an education so she can make the bacon,” the actor explained on Wednesday’s Live with Kelly and Michael. “It’s a very touching movie. It has a lot of pathos and it deals with the mental illness in a really, loving, beautiful, kind of very funny way.”

Ruffalo said it was really easy to research how to portray a bipolar person. Not only does he have people in his family who are living with the mental illness, he also had the Internet.

“You’d be surprised, but when people are bipolar and they’re in their mania, they like to videotape themselves and put it on YouTube,” he quipped.

Infinitely Polar Bear, starring Zoe Saldana as Ruffalo’s onscreen wife, is out in New York and Los Angeles Friday.

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