Never Fully Tamed
Some may know him as Marky Mark or perhaps Monk D or to many women, one of the hottest men alive. This particular person is none other than Mark Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg is an actor and producer who went from being just another common hooligan to a major influence on pop culture through movies and even music. Wahlberg has really made a name for himself playing lead roles in action films like The Italian Job (2003), Four Brothers (2005), The Departed (2006) and Shooter (2007). There seemed to be a common trend going on with the roles Wahlberg would play, the “bad ass” or “bad boy”, but maybe that’s because old habits die-hard. Looking back into his dark and troubled past may shed some light as to why he plays these “hard” roles and why they give him an edge and come naturally for him, besides the fact of having good acting skills.
As a teenager Mark was a regular old trouble maker, coming from a broken home and dropping out of high school. Wahlberg stole cars, abused drugs and alcohol and got in fights, fights that landed him in jail. While robbing a pharmacy under the influence of PCP, Wahlberg knocked a man out and permanently blinded another before being arrested. It was during his time in jail where he transformed into a big hunk and gained the body that he has become well known for. But how is it that apparent hopeless case turned his life around? It seems that Mark wasn’t the only Wahlberg with star talent. Older brother Donnie Wahlberg assisted to Mark’s fame due to Donnie’s successful 1980s and 1990s boy band New Kids on the Block. Mark was a member of this group at age thirteen but became uninterested in the group’s bubblegum pop style.
So brings the birth of “Marky Mark”. Wahlberg began rapping and recording as “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch” and he gave the world the number one hit song on the Billboard Hot 100, Good Vibrations. The music video depicted Wahlberg boxing, lifting weights and shirtless, showing off his chiseled body and taking part in sex with scandalous shots of a female on top of him and then later getting freaky against a medal fence, bodies pressed against the cold barrier. Wahlberg didn’t hold back any of his thoughts which goes along with his “bad boy” image, saying what he wants when he wants. Through out the somewhat raunchy video of Good Vibrations, referring to musical and sexual vibrations, Wahlberg asks the nude girl beside him, “Do you feel it baby?...Yeah I do too,” while licking his lips in a seductive manner. The level of confidence and cockiness Wahlberg had came naturally with his “bad ass” swag. This smug street-wise personality also contributed to his fame. At his concerts, he was known for being shirtless and of course dropping trou every once in a while. He was ballsy, in fact, in the dedication of his ’92 book Marky Mark, Wahlberg states in the preface “I wanna dedicate this book to my cock”. Told you he had ‘balls’.
Wahlberg was constantly in the headlines, often of the tabloids, after multiple scandals. Wahlberg was constantly getting into rumored fights, most memorably with Madonna and her entourage at a Los Angeles party. While things were always intense, they were relatively harmless and made for enjoyable reading for the public. While on a British talk show along with rapper Shabba Ranks, he got into even more trouble. After Ranks made the statement that gays should be crucified, Wahlberg was accused of condoning the comments by his silence. Marky Mark was suddenly surrounded by charges of brutality, homophobia and racial hatred. His second album, "You Gotta Believe", after the charges surfaced, plummeted from the charts. In addition Wahlberg was brought to court for allegedly assaulting a security guard. Humbled and humiliated by his fall from grace in the music world, Wahlberg decided to pursue another angle, acting. He dropped the "Marky Mark" name and became known simply as Mark Wahlberg. That was perhaps the turning point and greatest decision of his life.
He may have dropped the name but he still had the “hard ass” image that can be seen and heard through his smooth talking mellow voice and tough, yet sexy, appearance. Wahlberg had the talents to play in a plethora of different roles, but in many of his roles he played the guy from the rough neck of the woods, the bad guy that audiences wanted to get off scot-free. The Italian Job (2003) was one of the many films where Wahlberg played the good-bad guy, playing Charlie Crocker, a career criminal who had a team of expert thieves who pulled a daring 35 million dollar heist in bars of gold. One of the thieves betrays his companions and swipes the gold for himself. One year later, Wahlberg’s character and the other team members create a smart and devious plan to steal back the gold and get their revenge on the traitor.
The “don’t mess with me” exterior Wahlberg was shown powerfully in Four Brothers (2005) where Mark plays one of the Four adopted brothers that come together to bury their mother (Fionnula Flanagan) who was marked for death and murdered by two thieves in Detroit. The four brothers Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), Jack (Garrett Hedlund), Angel (Tyrese Gibson) and Jeremiah (Andre Benjamin) want revenge. They don't think the police will find the murderers, so with Bobby leading the way, they took matters into their own hands with dangerous car chases, hand to hand fist fights to the death, killing anyone even remotely involved. This role is much like his character in Max Payne (2008) whose wife and child are brutally murdered and Payne, played by Wahlberg, has no mercy and destroys anyone responsible.
In The Departed, Wahlberg gets a little change of pace and plays a Boston police officer. While in an interview on BBC’s Top Gear, Wahlberg was asked what one of his favorite roles he played was, he answered The Departed, he then goes on to joke saying, “playing an officer was my neck of the woods, I’ve had a lot of experiences with the Boston Police Department. And finally being able to put that to good use, you know, playing a cop instead of being arrested by them, was a lot of fun,” referring to his troubled past. But then good old Marky Mark plays once again the bad guy people love to love in Shooter (2007), playing retired marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger who gets framed as an assassin trying to kill the President of the U.S. Throughout the film wounded and hunted by thousands, Swagger goes in hiding, aided by two unlikely allies, searches for the truth and for those who double-crossed him and of course, shows no sympathy, as seen in the final scene when Wahlberg’s character walks away with a little “swag” from a cabin as it explodes, killing the last of his enemies.
The once “wild thing” Mark Wahlberg seems to come out here and there when he gets to play the roles of different people, and yet they all seem a lot like the same person. Although he has played a determined father figure in The Lovely Bones, a much softer role than his usual, and has stepped behind the camera in producing a major show based on his experiences in Hollywood in the hit HBO show Entourage, people can’t help but love seeing the dark, mysterious Wahlberg. Perhaps playing these “dark side” characters feels like home to Mark Wahlberg, giving the tamed beast the chance and freedom to be wild and dangerous as he once was.
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