Director Kenneth Lonergan Defends Mark Ruffalo Against Antisemitism Claims

Director Kenneth Lonergan is defending Mark Ruffalo after the actor was accused of being antisemitic.

“Mark Ruffalo has been talking about Israel since long before the Gaza war,” Lonergan, 63, wrote in a letter to The Hollywood Reporter published on Monday, August 31. “Apart from some routine social media ping-ponging, nobody serious I know of had accused him of antisemitism. Now Paramount has done just that, in the face of his sustained attacks on David Ellison and the upcoming Paramount merger.”

On Friday, August 21, Ruffalo, 58, took to Instagram to criticize the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger while tying billionaire Larry Ellison — father of Paramount CEO David Ellison — and Oracle to Israel's military actions in Gaza. In his post, he shared a recent clip of Safra Catz, Oracle’s executive vice chair and a Paramount board member, speaking about “profoundly scary technologies” Oracle shared with the Israeli government following the October 7 terror attacks in 2023. (Over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched military operations in the region, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, including more than 20,000 children.)