The actor Mark Ruffalo called Hollywood’s Michael Jordan: “One of the great, great artists”
Technically, Hollywood already has a Michael Jordan of its own, but Mark Ruffalo overlooked that fact to compare one of his friends and former co-stars to arguably basketball’s greatest-ever player.
Freshly minted Academy Award winner Michael B Jordan knows a thing or two about carrying the burden of being constantly mentioned in the same breath as the NBA legend and billionaire, which he even poked fun at when he made a cameo appearance in the awful Space Jam: A New Legacy.
As any sports fan will know, calling anyone the Michael Jordan of their chosen field is about as high as praise can get, with the Chicago Bulls icon becoming the sport’s most recognisable player of all time, a cross-generational superstar, and possibly the single best basketballer to take to the court.
His is not a name that can be invoked lightly, otherwise Ruffalo could be setting someone up to fail, but if you had 100 guesses to try and name which of his colleagues the four-time Oscar nominee declared as his industry’s closest equivalent, Julianne Moore probably wouldn’t be the first name that came to mind.
During a tribute to her career at the Museum of the Moving Image, which inevitably became one of those love-ins between actors that run the risk of becoming so sickly it’ll make your teeth rot, the long-time Hulk celebrated his Blindness and The Kids Are All Right co-star with the lofty comparison.
“Your work is touching, delicate, and beautifully conceived,” he said, which is true. Ruffalo then mused that “playing with the best raises the bar of your own talent,” and as far as he was concerned, sparring with Moore on set “is the equivalent of sharing the court with Michael Jordan.”
“I love you with all of my heart,” he concluded. “I think you’re one of the great, great artists working today. I’m honoured to know you.” It’s apples and oranges at the end of the day, since you can’t imagine Moore soaring through the air to thunder a game-winning dunk into the net, just like you can’t imagine Jordan cowering in fear from a T-Rex in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
If you want to be pedantic, Hollywood’s Michael Jordan is the guy who’s literally called Michael Jordan, but Ruffalo would disagree. From his perspective, Moore is the absolute performative pinnacle, and whenever they crossed paths, he knew he had to raise his game to even try to keep up.
Can she sink a three-pointer from distance? It’s unlikely, but since Jordan proved in the original Space Jam that he’s as wooden as the courts he excelled on, it’s not ridiculous to theorise that she’d be a lot better at basketball than he was at acting.
