Kieran Culkin Comes Forward As “Naughty Young Actor” Who Got Mark Ruffalo High On Stage

Although Kieran Culkin isn’t a proponent for method acting, sometimes there’s just no competing with the real thing.

Following a 2012 interview in which Mark Ruffalo revealed a “naughty young actor” once got him high on stage when switching a prop joint for the real thing during a play, the A Real Pain star confessed that he was behind the prank.

“I was 17 and stupid,” Culkin told The Guardian of when he appeared in Playwrights Horizons‘ 2000 production of James Lapine‘s The Moment When.

With a bag of prop joints backstage, Culkin couldn’t resist the urge to switch one for the real thing. “Uh-oh. I believe it’s happened,” he said to himself weeks later as he smelled a familiar scent and “just watched” Ruffalo take a hit and pass to their co-star.

At intermission, Culkin had to come clean. “I’m like, ‘I thought this was a good prank. I’m stupid. Oh my God, I’m so sorry,'” he recalled. “But actually, they loved it. Mark says, ‘I haven’t smoked pot in 10 years; the second half’s going to be so much fun.’ There was this other actor who had never smoked pot in her life. She goes, ‘Is this what being high is? This is lovely.’ And then Phyllis Newman comes in and goes, ‘I haven’t smoked pot since the 1960s. Thank you, darling.'”

Culkin continued, “Then the stage manager comes stomping in and goes, ‘I don’t care whose it is, or what happened, but Kieran, give me the joint. I sheepishly handed her the roach and she said, ‘Ruin your life on your own time.'”

The Golden Globe winner seems to have learned his lesson. “I know, I know. But I was young. I’m 42 now. I know better. I’m not going to try to get anyone high on stage,” he said.

Ruffalo previously recounted the incident when he appeared on The Graham Norton Show in 2012: “There was a play that I did that I had to smoke a joint in the first scene. And of course, there was a very naughty young actor I was in the play with, who on the opening night with all the critics, he slipped a real joint onto the prop table.”

Noting that when he’s acting on stage, he tends to “overdo everything,” Ruffalo said, “So, when you’re out at a party, you take two puffs and you say, ‘Okay, that’s enough. I’m so stoned.’ But I was acting, so I was just like—,” he explained, faking a big inhale.

“Between the two of us, we smoked a giant blunt on stage,” said Ruffalo. “And I’m like, ‘Man, I am in it tonight. I feel it. I’m on fire. I’m feeling it… why’s that dude standing backstage laughing at me?’ And the kid who put the joint on the prop table is standing there, [laughing]. And I just went, ‘Oh s—.'”

Ruffalo added, “But at the end of the play, I got the best reviews of my entire career.”