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Who Is Noah Centineo and Is He Related to Mark Ruffalo?

By Kristy Puchko | Celebrity | July 16, 2018 |

By Kristy Puchko | Celebrity | July 16, 2018 |


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Netflix is getting into the Noah Centineo business. The 22-year-old ingendude is playing a love interest in two upcoming Netflix original movies. And his appearance in their trailers has us asking: Who Is Noah Centineo? And is he related to Mark Ruffalo? (Or maybe a Mark Ruffalo clone?)

While Centineo has just snagged the notice of the Overlords, he’s been on the radar of the youths, popping up on Disney series like Austin & Ally, Shake It Up and Jessie, and the TV-movie How to Be a Better Boy. You can spot him below in the clip, playing the dreamy Jaden:

By 2015, Centineo’s work grew a bit more mature. He took over the role of Jesus Adams Foster on the Freeform drama series The Fosters, which centered on a family made up of a lesbian couple and their mix of biological, adoptive, and foster children. Then in 2017, he co-starred in the thriller web series T@gged and the cyber-bullying horror-thriller Can’t Take It Back, which also featured infamous Youtube star Logan Paul.

But Centineo is now embarking on a new chapter of his career: rom-coms! And here’s where the Mark Ruffalo questions come in.

Coming August 17th to Netflix, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before is based on Jenny Han’s best-selling YA novel about a teen girl whose wallflower lifestyle is rattled when her secret love letters to the crushes (past and present) get out. Centineo plays one of those boys. In the trailer, you get a hint of the similarities that have us double-taking. Look for Peter “with the beautiful eyes” at the 1:30 mark. (No pun intended.)

Centineo’s got bold, quizzical eyebrows paired with rich, dark curls atop his head that bring out his brown eyes. He has a slight snarl when he talks, but it’s far from menacing or off-putting. His smile is warm and guileless. And he sounds JUST LIKE MARK RUFFALO.

Now, here’s the trailer for Netflix’s September 7th release Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, a teen rom-com starring Barb (A.K.A. Shannon Purser) as a genderswapped Cyrano de Bergerac. Naturally, Centineo plays the “hot jock” she’s catfishing.

Netflix is betting you will fall hard for Centineo. Over and over. And we probably will! Even in these trailers, this smirking leading man has a beaming, boyish charisma.

Because the world is a senseless place full of injustice, Mark Ruffalo didn’t break through until he was 33, with You Can Count on Me. From there, Hollywood finally took note of how damn crushable this rumpled hunk was, and we were gifted 13 Going on 30, Just Like Heaven and Ruffalo boogeying in his undies in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But by then, he’d definitely aged out of playing the dreamy teen boy you wished was your first love. And so, here comes Centineo, making right what once went wrong, and the world a better place.

Thanks to Ruffalo’s throwback Thursday pics, we can see Centineo is not a dead ringer for young Ruff. So, my pet theory that the Avengers’s star is a time traveler or has a secret clone is less likely.

#tbt

A post shared by Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) on

That resemblance tho!

The more rational explanation for the seeming similarity in appearance, expression, and voice would be that Centineo and Ruffalo are related, even distantly. Yet there’s not a single indication online that they are or that they even know each other. The closest I found was the former’s retweet of a deleted tweet from the latter.

So, this appears to be an instance like Ben Schwartz/Joe Keery or Dave Franco/Hart Denton, two totally unrelated guys winning the genetic lottery, and making us all winners.