'I really didn't think I could do it': Mark Ruffalo was daunted by playing Poor Things antagonist

Mark Ruffalo "was scared" of playing the villain in 'Poor Things'.

The 56-year-old star plays scheming lawyer Duncan Wedderburn in the acclaimed new movie and admits that he had doubts about taking on the "flashy" part.

Mark told Deadline's Breaking Baz column at the BAFTA Tea Party in Los Angeles: "The bad ones are the best and I was scared of it.

"I really didn't think I could do it. Being a bad person on screen, breaking whatever expectations. It's such a flashy part and I had never really dug my teeth into anything like that – and man was it freeing and liberating and just joyfully wicked!"

The 'Dark Waters' actor has tended to play wholesome characters during his career but explained that he has never attempted to avoid antagonistic roles.

Mark said: "Nobody asked me to do them and so this is the one time where they saw me in a part I don't think many people would have possibly seen me in. It's not so much avoiding it, they don't really come my way. Now they will, hopefully."

Ruffalo will now play "another psychopath" in Bong Joon-ho's upcoming sci-fi film 'Mickey 17'.

He said: "This guy's like a nasty dictator, fascist, narcissist; we know the type! It's a whole new era."

Mark previously described how he had a ball playing a character with "no sense of morality" in 'Poor Things'.

He told his former Marvel co-star Robert Downey Jr.: "Oh, it was the time of my life. I got to play that guy with no sense of self-consciousness or no sense of morality – really, no sense of any bounds whatsoever that hold us."