From teen pop idol to respected Hollywood producer, American actor and producer Mark Wahlberg, born 1971, had troubles early in his life. With the film “Contraband”, which he produced and starred in, he sort of revisited his criminal past.
Mark was the youngest of nine children. His father, Donald, was half Swedish and half Irish. Before starting acting he was known as part of the boyband New Kids on the Block, started in 1984 by his big brother Donny (b. 1996). Later he was best known as Marky Mark, the pants-dropping rapper, attaining fame with his group the Funky Bunch, most known for the 1992 hit single “Good Vibrations”.
Same year he received the lion’s share of attention for a Calvin Klein ad campaign, in which he was wearing nothing more than his underwear, Kate Moss, and his attitude.
Wahlberg turned his attention to acting with a role in “The Substitute”, which was a commercial failure, but “the Renaissance Man” (1994) with Danny De Vito, gave him positive notices. He garnered In particular early praise for his role in “Boogie Nights” (1997). The film was nominated for three Oscars and a slew of other awards by associations ranging from the British Academy to the New York Film Critics Circle to MTV.
From then on a wide range of magazine covers gave him greater Hollywood pulling power.
Wahlberg’s follow-up to Boogie Nights was 1998’s “The Big Hit” (1998), proved, however, to be a disappointment. His next film, “The Corruptor” (1999), co-starring Chow Yun-Fat, showcased Wahlberg’s familiar macho side and indicated that success in Hollywood is a strange and unpredictable thing.
The following year, with his lead role in Tim Burton’s much-anticipated remake of Planet of the Apes, the role that Charlton Heston made famous, received some hefty criticism.
A victim of one of Mark Wahlberg’s racially motivated attacks as a teenage delinquent in segregated Boston in the 1980s insists now that he shouldn’t be granted a pardon for his crimes. “I don’t think he should get a pardon,” Atwood, now 38 and living in Decatur, Georgia, said in an interview with Associated Press.
In 1988, Wahlberg, then 16, attacked two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer near his Dorchester home.
Since these events, Mark Wahlberg has certainly been able to forgive himself. In an interview with ABC in 2006, he stated: “You have to go and ask for forgiveness, and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.”
“My cowboy-days are far gone,” he said in an interview some years earlier. “I now go to bed at nine o’clock every night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.”
Written by Tor Kjolberg
All photos: Wikipedia