Fans were nearly robbed of the countless memorable moments between Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo in the 2004 movie 13 going on 30.
On Thursday, Feb. 8, during a ceremony honoring Ruffalo and his Hollywood Walk of Fame star, Garner revealed that her co-star almost quit the film after the pair first rehearsed the now iconic "Thriller" scene.
“I wonder if these esteemed ladies enjoyed Mark's anxiety as much as I did,” Garner said, referring to Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow and Keira Knightley who have all shared on-screen romances with Rufffalo.
“I wonder if he tried to drop out of their films," she continued, "like he did out of ours after the first rehearsal of the 'Thriller' dance where Mark went from kind of shocked that we actually had to do this, to antsy, to deathly quiet, to 'Bro, this is not for me.’"
Garner and Ruffalo ended up recreating the scene during the ceremony, to the delight of fans the world over.
Garner also credited Ruffalo's rom-com success to his "scruffy hair" and "untucked cute button down," going on to add that both "became like the norm for cute guys everywhere for the next 20 years."
Garner's speech wasn't the first time she has talked about Ruffalo almost walking away from 13 going on 30. In a 2021 interview with theSkimm, Garner dished on just how close fans were to being robbed of Ruffalo's "Thriller" dance moves.
"We started to learn the dance. Our first rehearsal, I think it was Mark and Judy (Greer) and me, and Judy and I were both dancers growing up and poor Mark didn't know that," Garner said at the time. "And he came in and he hated the rehearsal process so much he almost dropped out."
Ruffalo also weighed in on the rehearsals and why he wasn't in love with the process.
On an Instagram post on People's official page covering Garner's comments in her 2021 theSkimm interview, Ruffalo wrote: "It didn't help that it took me 3 hours to learn what Jen mastered in about 20 minutes!"
While Garner brought the jokes in her speech at Ruffalo's Walk of Fame star reveal, she was also sincere and heartfelt.
"To work with you, Mark, is to love you, I don't care what anyone says," Garner said, before telling her former co-start that it is “a privilege” to know him.
