The Real Mark Wahlberg

Things are working out for Mark Wahlberg. His last three movies have done very nicely, thanks, at the box office, with decent reviews to match. Entourage, the HBO show he helped put together, and which is based on his own experience as an up-and-comer in Hollywood, is still riding high in the ratings. And then he took a supporting role to work with Martin Scorsese in The Departed and stole away with an Academy Award - which is more than his old Basketball Diaries pal Leonardo DiCaprio has managed.

If - like his Entourage alter-ego Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier) - Wahlberg's ambition was to have a career like Johnny Depp's, he's well on the way there. Actors look up to Depp because he's versatile, he's made a point of working with filmmakers he admires, and he's stayed in demand while retaining his integrity. If he's also taken to dressing up like a pirate at regular intervals, well, as someone else on Entourage pointed out he dresses like that in real life too.

s true Wahlberg doesn't have Depp's range or his penchant for play. One of nine kids (he's a devout Catholic) he grew up in a blue collar neighbourhood in Boston and it shows. It took a long time to live down his Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch persona - and even more so, the Calvin Klein model in his underwear - but the truth is Wahlberg is as street as the next rapper. As a teenager he was often in trouble with the law, and he served some 50 days for assault.

Nothing admirable about that, but when Wahlberg plays a tough cop (The Departed; The Corruptor), a crook (The Italian Job); an infantryman (Three Kings); or a firefighter (I Heart Huckabees), you pretty much believe everything he says and does. That's not necessarily the case with many (Caucasian) stars in his age bracket (he's 35). Even those like Tobey Maguire and Joaquin Phoenix who come from lower middle-class backgrounds tend to have spent their formative years in front of TV cameras. At 20, Wahlberg was a comparatively late-starter in showbiz - by then, this kid knew his way around the block.

Judging by Entourage, the reason 'Vince Chase' surrounds himself with friends from the old days is because he wants to keep a handle on who he is and where he comes from. Keeping it real (and partying like it doesn't matter). That's the mistake Eddie Adams makes in Boogie Nights, Wahlberg's breakthrough role. Eddie - aka Dirk Diggler, aka Brock Landers - is just a nice suburban Southern California kid who comes to believe in his own big, bright shining star billing. And loses it all.

His performance in Anderson's three-hour porn epic is sweet, funny, perversely modest (in a way, he's playing the ingénue). Boogie Nights established that Wahlberg could act for anyone who hadn't been paying attention to early efforts like Fear and The Basketball Diaries. It also made him a poster boy for Young Hollywood: no coincidence that he went from PT Anderson to two more ambitious, cocky young filmmakers, David O Russell (Three Kings) and James Grey (The Yards - an underrated drama which is probably Wahlberg's best show case to date).

Things went a bit rocky after that - Wahlberg says it's because he chose projects based on the directors, not the scripts. The Perfect Storm, Planet Of The Apes, and The Truth About Charlie all failed to live up to their pedigree (Wolfgang Petersen, Tim Burton and Jonathan Demme respectively), while Rock Star felt too much like a watered down Boogie clone.

But The Italian Job confirmed his box office status (The Brazilian Job is on the cards for 2008), and both the American football drama Invincible and this week's expert action thriller Shooter have performed to expectations, consolidating Wahlberg's popular appeal as an ordinary Joe with extraordinary talent. In the former (based on a true story) he plays a 30-year-old bartender who shows up for an open tryout for the Philadelphia Eagles and winds up playing in the NFL. In the latter he's an aggrieved Special Ops vet, a marksman who finds himself on the run after being set up as the fall guy for an attempt on the President's life - think twenty first century Rambo.

That's not to say Wahlberg is simply playing it Safe now. He signed up for Russell's I Heart Huckabees after all (I still cherish the image of him and Jason Schwartzman hitting each other with a big rubber ball). He's gone back to make another film with James Grey (We Own the Night), is linked with the next M Night Shyamalan picture, and then a project with Darren Aronofsky. Safe definitely isn't the word.

He says his wild days are behind him - he has two young children now, and hardly hangs out with the entourage anymore. He's also talked about being smart enough to quit while he's ahead. To say that's premature is an understatement. I reckon Wahlberg's just hitting his peak right now. He's going to be in demand for a long time to come.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com