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Tough Love
Actor/producer Mark Wahlberg channels his bad boy past into his role as an international smuggler in the thriller, 'Contraband'.
In keeping with global warming, the fortnight before Christmas is relatively balmy for this time of year in Manhattan. Mark Wahlberg has only three weeks of filming left on the set of his latest movie, Broken City, with Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. He describes the project as "a crime thriller drama set in New York." It's an independent film that he has long wanted to make, but has had to delay due to costs. But, he notes, the success of the Oscar winning The Fighter "made it a lot easier" to finance the project.
Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the actor is seated in a luxury suite of The Mandarin Hotel, with panoramic views of the skyline. Over the last few years, Wahlberg's physique has yo-yoed to fit various roles. After bulking up to play football legend Vince Papale in Invincible and Sergeant Dignam in The Departed (which earned him an Oscar nomination), Wahlberg dropped the pounds for Antoine Fuqua's Shooter. A ripped physique was imperative for his largely shirtless turn in the comedy Date Night, and the actor had to get into top physical form for The Fighter.
Today, he again looks fighting fit. "I had to train for the movie that I'm shooting right now," he explains. "In order to do it and not have it affect the rest of my day and schedule, I go to bed at 8:30, then I wake up at 4:30, and I'm in the gym at 5:00 until 6:30. Then I get the kids up and take them to school so I can get home and start doing my work stuff." So the former Calvin Klein underwear model and bad boy known as Marky Mark with a lengthy juvenile rap sheet, has become a middle-aged LA guy? "Exactly," he says, laughing. "I'm glad that I made it. At one point, I didn't think that I would."
As the youngest of nine children (his older brother, Donnie, was a member of hugely successful eighties boy band, New Kids On The Block) brought up in the rough neighbourhood of Dorchester in Boston, Wahlberg was swept up into a life of petty crime as a kid. He cites his teenage years through into his twenties as a period of his life which, in retrospect, he's surprised that he survived. At sixteen, Wahlberg landed in prison. Charged with attempted murder, he instead pleaded guilty to assault. Several of his siblings also ended up behind bars.
"Shit happens," he says. "There were a lot of times when I went to jail." He says that he "made poor choices, and was hanging out with the wrong people - choices to do drugs, to break the law, to rob and steal. I walked out my front door, and if that is all that you see around you every day..." he trails off. "It's all good now. It's a nice relief to be able to just accept certain things. I'm an old man. Those days are behind me. You're not as tough as you thought you were. I saw Real Steel three times. I see kids' movies. The craziest that I get now is on the golf course in the morning."
Wahlberg's early brushes with the law and his exposure to the seedy underworld of crime has, however, come in handy. In the likes of Four Brothers, The Yards and The Italian Job, he has inhabited the role of a criminal trying to go straight who is compelled to break the law in order to save himself or those closest to him. In his new film, Contraband, Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, a security systems specialist who has left behind his days as a notorious smuggler to focus on his family. But when his brother-in-law is forced to dump a shipment of drugs to avoid capture, Farraday has no choice but to mastermind a run of counterfeit money from Panama to New Orleans in order to pay back his debt.
"My past helps me identify with these characters better and play those parts," Wahlberg offers. "Having a wife and four small children, I can certainly identify with doing anything to protect them and anything to provide for my family. Those are the guys that I like to watch and root for. I certainly gravitate towards those characters."
Contraband is released on February 23. This is an excerpt from an interview with Mark Wahlberg taken from our March issue, which is on sale in newsagents or via Zinio now. The story can also be found in the current edition of FilmInk for the iPad.
