Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo Throw It Back With ‘13 Going On 30′ ‘Thriller’ Routine At Hollywood Walk Of Fame Ceremony

By Radhamely De Leon
Published Feb. 9, 2024, 10:50 a.m. ET

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Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Garner joined director David Fincher in honoring Mark Ruffalo at the Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony on Thursday (Feb. 8). Garner joked that she was there to honor “rom-com Ruffalo” and show off his softer side, which they certainly did.

As she took the podium to give her speech, she and Ruffalo briefly reenacted Michael Jackson‘s iconic “Thriller” dance routine, which they famously performed in 13 Going on 30.

“How lucky are we to have been in a movie that kids are dressing up for as Halloween? It still means something to people,” she said regarding the 2004 comedy, per Entertainment Weekly.

She then added that she wonders if Ruffalo’s other rom-com co-stars “would agree that Mark owes this rom-com success to the scruffy hair, the untucked cute button-down, both of which became the norm for cute guys everywhere for the next 20 years.”

Garner later teased her former co-star, revealing that he was nervous to learn they had to perform a dance routine together.

13-going-on-30
Photo: Everett Collection

“I wonder if these esteemed ladies enjoyed Mark’s anxiety as much as I did,” she said of his other former co-stars. “I wonder if he tried to drop out of their films 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 a deathly quiet, to ‘Bro, this is not for me.'”

Garner went on to praise Ruffalo for his recent work in Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things opposite Emma Stone, for which Ruffalo received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

“To work with you, Mark, is to love you,” she said. “You allow yourself to be fully known — by your colleagues, by the audience, by the world. Your work on Poor Things deserves all of the awards. All of them.”

She continued, “But the real success is in how thrilled and delighted your colleagues are to have the opportunity to lift you up and celebrate you. Every time your name is called, Hollywood takes a deep, collective breath, and says, ‘Okay, the good and right thing has happened.'”

13 Going on 30 is now streaming on Netflix if you want to see their “Thriller” routine in all its glory.