Mark Ruffalo Explains Thor: Ragnarok Live-Stream Incident

Although Mark Ruffalo plays a superhero, he's only human.

A few weeks back, the Hulk actor accidentally and infamously live-streamed the first 10 minutes of Thor: Ragnarok while attending an advance screening. Although he quickly apologized when he realized what had happened, he explained the whole thing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

"[Marvel and Disney] asked me to do an Instagram live post," Ruffalo said. "So I said I would do that. But I've never done Instagram live, so I didn't really know how it worked... So I went backstage and I was doing the Instagram live and that was fun and games and everyone loved it. I was [filming] the audience and then they said, 'Return to your seat. We're gonna start the movie.' So I push the button which you think is going to stop it, but then there's another button to stop it. The first button just tells you to push the second button to stop it. I ended up shoving it in my pocket and sitting down, and watching the movie while it was live. It's broadcasting the movie basically free to millions and millions of hopefully paying viewers."

Of course, friends and people he hasn't seen "since high school" immediately began texting him. But there's a good reason Ruffalo didn't notice. "I must've got 50 texts in 10 minutes," he said. "I didn't want to be rude and take out my phone to look at the texts. You can't do that in a movie. You're an a-hole if you do that."

Eventually, someone at the theater approached him and told him what was up. "So I'm sitting there enjoying the movie with my family and a woman came up and she poked me on the shoulder, and I turned to her and said, 'What?' She said, 'Your phone is on! You're Instagramming live this whole show. You've been Instagramming live for 10 minutes! Turn it off!'"

Ruffalo was embarrassed, but he wasn't afraid that Marvel would fire him. "Not yet," he said. "I'm in the middle of [filming Avengers 4]. They're not gonna fire you before you're finished."

The rest of us won't have to wait long to see Thor: Ragnarok. It hits theaters tomorrow, Nov. 3. And then Ruffalo can breathe.