Mark Ruffalo's Dark Waters uses entertainment to spread awareness

For Mark Ruffalo, who is a passionate environmental activist, his upcoming film Dark Waters combines his devotion to story-telling and activism.

Los Angeles: Mark Ruffalo's new movie combines the actor's devotion to story-telling and activism. He plays Rob Bilott, a real corporate attorney who embarked on a two decade fight against Dupont to expose the harmful effects of chemicals. He ended up winning a payout of more than $600 million in a class action lawsuit.

Ruffalo says he first learned of the story when reading an article about the case and knew it would make a great film.

"It seemed like it had to be done," said Ruffalo. "It felt like the story and the movie that we needed to have come out when I was imagining it would come out. And, you know, it had a lot of elements of a genre piece to me which made me feel like it could be a really popular movie while at the same time talk about these really important issues and one of the greatest crimes and cover-ups in American history with thriller elements and horror elements and paranoia, you know, of impending danger."

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Tim Robbins, who plays Ruffalo's boss in the film, also recalls hearing about the DuPont story and says it made him immediately take action.

For Ruffalo, a passionate environmental activist, the film combines his desire to be a storyteller and to spread information.

"When science and rationale become questionable then I think the next best thing is story-telling about real human beings and I wanted to find a way to blend activism with story-telling and make a really good, entertaining product."

Dark Waters opens Nov. 22. in the United States.

With inputs from APTN