Mark Wahlberg talks to Tim Nasson about Invincible
Los Angeles – It was thirty-five years ago, June 5th, 1971, to be exact, that Mark Wahlberg was born in the poor, working class section of Boston known as Dorchester. Wahlberg was the last of nine kids, (six boys, and three girls), his mother would give birth to – he, and his brothers Robert and Donnie are the result of his mother’s third marriage.
Life, at least the first half of it, was no picnic for Mark Wahlberg. The scrawny Irish ‘bad boy’ was just that. Bad, literally.
He was so mentally tortured and untamed that at the age of fourteen he dropped out of school and became what so many other children raised in tough, lower class environments become – criminal.
Mark Wahlberg, before he was even an adult – age eighteen – was arrested myriad times for everything from assault and violent hate crimes to drug dealing and stealing.
One judge finally had had enough of Wahlberg’s antics and sentenced the trouble making tough boy to 50 days at Deer Island Penitentiary. Wahlberg was only 16.
“Some kids would say ‘fuck this,'” says Wahlberg, “These are the cards I was dealt. This is what my life will amount to. What can I do about it?”
I have had the chance to sit with Wahlberg a number of times during the past couple of years, the most recent, while he was shooting “The Departed” in Boston and in Los Angeles recently where he spoke about his upcoming Disney film, “Invincible.”
“Not to sound like a saint, because I am still far from one,” reveals Wahlberg, leaning back in his chair, wearing blue jeans, a Red Sox baseball cap and a futuristic Nike wrist watch, “But those two months in jail were where I had an epiphany. I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life locked up. I might have been acting like an animal but I didn’t want to be a caged one. I started lifting weights in jail and went from 130lbs of scrawniness to 170lbs of muscle that year.”
Taking pages from his own book, Wahlberg steps into the shoes of Vince Papale in the Disney film “Invincible,” which is based on a true story.
“This guy,” says Wahlberg, of the character Vince he portrays in “Invincible,” in theaters Friday (August 25th), “had never even played college football, let alone pro football. He had played in beer leagues for a number of years. Football was his passion. But becoming a professional football player was not even a blip on his radar screen.
“It was the early 70s,” continues Wahlberg. “And the Philadelphia Eagles had had eleven really bad seasons in a row. The new coach had progressive ideas, to say the least. He made an announcement on the news, telling anyone who thought they could cut it that he was holding tryouts that weekend at the stadium. So Vince Papale, the guy I play in the movie, shows up, never having stepped onto a professional football field before and gets picked to play after showing the team and coach what he was capable of. It really goes to show that you can never give up on your dreams.”
Wahlberg’s claim to fame is somewhat similar. People began to take notice of five foot, eight inch Wahlberg, after his juvenile criminal antics, in a good way. His brother Donnie, who was riding the success of his group New Kids on the Block offered his little bro a chance to join them.
“That wasn’t for me,” says Mark. “It was too squeaky clean. Yeah, I wanted to cut the criminal shit out but I didn’t want to be bouncing around on stage with five or six pretty boys, either.”
Another opportunity soon arose and Wahlberg jumped on it. Donnie, knowing Mark didn’t want to join NKOTB, set up a meeting between Mark and some record producers he was friendly with, having full confidence that his little brother had the same ability as he to bounce around on stage and captivate audiences. The meeting went smoothly and Wahlberg was signed to record a rap album and christened himself “Marky Mark,” and hired a posse of dancers and back up singers, mostly black, which he named “The Funky Bunch.”
Gay billionaire David Geffen took an instant liking to Wahlberg, (in a non-sexual way), and talked his friend Calvin Klein into signing Wahlberg, who at the time was in his early twenties, to an exclusive underwear modeling contract and from that moment on, Marky Mark, or Mark Wahlberg, whatever you like, was seen on billboards across the world – arm and legs muscles bulging and another one, too, the one that was under the only piece of clothing he wore on the billboards, and magazine and newspaper ads.
I remind Wahlberg that I remembered seeing him backstage – at the Kiss-108FM concerts, which were wildly popular in Boston during the early 90s – when he was “Marky Mark,” surrounded by 350lbs, six foot, six inch, black ‘body guards,’ with a lollipop in his mouth, and baseball cap on backwards, shorts falling off his ass. Wahlberg turns beet red, and almost falls off his chair which he is leaning back on when I bring him down memory lane. “That was so long ago. I was so much different. I was even known to drop my pants on stage.” One of those years, 1992, was also the year that Wahlberg was named one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful.
Mark Wahlberg may have dropped his pants on stage but went on to dropping his underwear in one of the best movies he has starred in, to date, ‘Boogie Nights,” which was based on the 70s porn star Dirk Diggler. “I certainly wouldn’t have mind showing my own cock in the movie,” laughs Wahlberg, “but I think the producers and director had the authentic Dirk Diggler dick in mind when they wrote the scene. So I had on a strap-on, well, actually, a glue-on when it came to the money shot scene.”
Wahlberg is one of the few male kid singers cum actors who have succeeded in the movie business.
“The music business was getting me into trouble because of my big mouth,” admits Wahlberg, who was accused of being homophobic and racist by some journalists around the world. “But I liked my lifestyle, I guess, so decided to try a change of career and took up Penny Marshall of her offer on ‘Renaissance Man,’ [back in 1994 and Wahlberg’s first movie], and wouldn’t think about anything other than acting, now. I love it.”
And it shows on and off screen.
Wahlberg seems to have settled down – he has settled into a $5 million Beverly Hills mansion with his mother, longtime partner (Rhea Durham), and their two kids. A nearly four year old daughter and newborn son.
Whether Wahlberg returns to music or not remains to be seen. “I don’t think so,” says Wahlberg in all seriousness.
Wahlberg finished shooting Martin Scorsese’s latest, “The Departed,” with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. “It’s been in the can for over a year,” says Wahlberg. “A lot of people have been waiting very patiently for this. But it’s Martin Scorsese. So don’t get too worried about the delay.”
In addition to his acting responsibilities, which include the upcoming sequel to “The Italian Job,” the aptly titled “The Brazilian Job,” since it will be set and shot in Brazil, Wahlberg also produces the popular HBO series “Entourage,” which is loosely, and he emphasizes the word loose, on his life. “I couldn’t really do too much of my own stuff and experiences with ‘Entourage’ because I would really get into trouble if I put that on screen. I would have to kill a lot of people first,” says Wahlberg.
