Mark Ruffalo premieres 'Sympathy' in New York

Mark Ruffalo has premiered his film Sympathy For Delicious in New York.

The actor, who marked his directorial debut with the project, showed the movie for the first time to audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday.

Talking to The Huffington Post, Ruffalo confessed to feeling hesitant about working behind the camera as well as in front of it, explaining: "I was very nervous about it on the first day. I thought, 'I don't really know what the hell I'm doing and how dare I think that I did'.

"And then I walked out and I set up the shot and was like, 'You know, I don't like the shot, I don't like the camera here, I want to move it over here'. And very quickly I found myself naturally directing the movie."

His real-life friend and the film's scriptwriter and star Christopher Thornton went on to reveal that the project faced other obstacles, adding: "[Mark] had never directed before; I was, as far as film goes, a pretty unknown actor playing the lead; and the subject matter, people found odd. They were like, 'Look, there's no sex, there's no car chases, there's no explosions - it's a guy in a wheelchair and a priest. What on earth are we supposed to do with that?'"

Sympathy For Delicious centres on a former DJ who is poor and wheelchair-bound before discovering his hidden powers of faith healing. Orlando Bloom, Juliette Lewis and Ruffalo also star.