Mark Ruffalo

Celebrities may know how to turn it on for the red carpet, but when they're sitting down, enjoying (or maybe not enjoying) a fashion show, they often forget that they're still surrounded by cameras.

As we gear up to awards seasons, with the first major red carpet event, the Golden Globes, coming up this Sunday, W has put out a timely spread they're calling "Best Performances." "The most remarkable moments in film this past year weren’t 3-D action sequences but characters so real they hurt. Here, the actors who made us believe," the subhed reads. True to the title, the spread, shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin features all the most buzzed about actors from the past year including: Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis from Black Swan, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo from The Kids Are All Right, Jonah Hill, the Fanning sisters, Michael Douglas etc.,--it's an impressive assemblage of major A-listers. Beyond the impressive celeb line-up, the most striking thing about this spread is the styling by Melanie Ward. What have they done to Mark Ruffalo? I'm a big Mark Ruffalo fan (I mean, You Can Count on Me?) and I would be hard pressed to ever find his appearance laughable but that's all I can do when I look at his portrait in W. Why the technicolor dreamcoat? Why topless with his hand extended back over his head as if to say, "Ole!" but in an intense seductive kind of way? Why the weird sunset backdrop? And the fun doesn't stop there. Dlisted's Michael K says it best when he calls this spread "a gallery of glorious WTFness." After Ruffalo, Jonah Hill's over-serious portrait, fist on face, deep in thought, wearing a vintage YSL cape elicits some giggles as well. Julianne Moore is screaming in her portrait. And Michael Douglas is eating baby's breath.