Keen Ruffalo is making his breakthrough as Connor in Prime Video’s coming-of-age drama Sterling Point, following an unconventional route into acting despite being the son of Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo.

The 25-year-old actor had not initially planned to follow his father into the film industry.

Born in June 2001, Keen is Mark Ruffalo’s eldest child with Sunrise Coigney and grew up on the family’s dairy farm in Callicoon, New York.

Keen previously appeared in small roles in his father’s films, including Begin Again and Thor: Ragnarok. He also featured in Mark’s television projects Task and Hal & Harper in 2025.

However, acting was not always his ambition. Keen enrolled at Drexel University to study fashion design but left during the COVID-19 pandemic. He later began studying acting and performing in theatre.

Keen said his father encouraged him to earn opportunities rather than rely on his family name. “My dad didn’t want to hand me or my siblings anything, because it’s just not how he was raised,” he told Cultured.

The actor said he went through more than 100 auditions before landing Sterling Point, in which he plays a teenager who inherits an island from a grandfather he never knew.

“I definitely did not expect it,” Keen told WWD about securing the role. “I don’t think my parents did either because my dad was like, ‘This is messed up.’”

Keen is also appearing in Nimrods, a road-trip comedy inspired by Green Day, which is scheduled to reach cinemas on August 14.

Looking ahead, he plans to continue auditioning and may return to education to study acting. As his father put it, the profession involves “Suffering, auditioning.”

“That’s obviously most of what the job is,” Keen said.