Mark Wahlberg

Mark Wahlberg (born June 5, 1971, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American actor who first gained fame as a member of the rap group Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and then as a Calvin Klein model before launching a successful film career. His popular films include Boogie Nights (1997), The Departed (2006), The Fighter (2010), and Ted (2012).

Upbringing and music career

Wahlberg was the youngest of nine children in a working-class family living in the Dorchester district of Boston. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he dropped out of high school at the age of 14. Wahlberg led a troubled life, engaging in stealing, drug dealing, substance abuse, and violence. At age 16 he was convicted of assault and was sentenced to prison; he eventually served 45 days.

After his release, his older brother Donnie, then a member of the successful band New Kids on the Block, helped him begin a music career. In 1990 Mark styled himself as Marky Mark and formed Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. The band’s debut album, Music for the People (1991), which featured cowriting and arrangements by brother Donnie, was a modest success and produced two hit singles, “Good Vibrations” and “Wildside.”

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In performances and supporting videos, Marky Mark was prone to disrobe, and his physique gained him more admirers than did his rapping. He was hired by the fashion design company Calvin Klein as an underwear model, and the billboard, TV, and print photo campaign brought him fame that eclipsed his music career. Nonetheless, his “bad boy” image proved to be a mixed blessing, and Wahlberg decided to abandon his Marky Mark persona and pursue a career in acting.

Transition to acting: Boogie Nights, Three Kings, and The Departed

Wahlberg’s first movie role was a small part in the slight comedy Renaissance Man (1994). He gained critical notice the following year in The Basketball Diaries and worked steadily thereafter. Wahlberg’s breakout role was the lead in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), in which he portrayed the rise and fall of a porn star. Highly sought after, Wahlberg took roles in a wide range of genres, including comedy, action, and drama. He gave standout performances in such films as David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999); The Perfect Storm (2000), a drama about an ill-fated fishing boat; Planet of the Apes (2001), a remake of the 1968 sci-fi classic; and The Italian Job (2003), which was based on the 1969 British cult hit. In 2006 Wahlberg appeared as a tough Boston police officer in Martin Scorsese’s crime drama The Departed. Wahlberg earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, and the film was named best picture.

The Fighter, Ted, and Deepwater Horizon

Wahlberg reteamed with Russell on The Fighter (2010), a critically acclaimed docudrama about a boxer and his family. He turned to lighter fare with Seth MacFarlane’s Ted (2012), a popular comedy about a talking teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane), and its 2015 sequel. Other credits in this period include Lone Survivor (2013), in which he played a Navy SEAL whose mission goes awry; Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) and its sequel Transformers: The Last Knight (2017); The Gambler (2014), a remake of a 1974 film based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and the comedy Daddy’s Home (2015) and its 2017 sequel.

In 2016 Wahlberg starred as an electronics technician in Deepwater Horizon, an action drama based on the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and as a police officer in Patriots Day, about the Boston Marathon bombing. He then appeared in the biopic All the Money in the World (2017), which recounts the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty. Wahlberg faced criticism when reports revealed that he had been paid a salary far larger than that of his female costar, Michelle Williams, for reshoots of the film after Kevin Spacey was dropped from the production over sexual harassment allegations. Wahlberg responded to the outcry by stating that he supported equal pay, which had become a growing issue in Hollywood, and he donated his reshoot salary to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, an account to help defray the legal expenses of women who experienced workplace sexual harassment.

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Later work

In 2018 Wahlberg starred in the action thriller Mile 22 and in the comedy Instant Family. In the 2020s Wahlberg began appearing mostly in streaming movies. He played a former police officer turned private investigator in Spenser Confidential (2020), which aired on Netflix. His other credits from 2020 include the biopic Joe Bell, in which he played a father who, after his bullied gay son died by suicide, undertakes a walk across the United States. In the sci-fi thriller Infinite (2021), Wahlberg was cast as a man with schizophrenia who discovers that his hallucinations are memories of past lives that stretch back thousands of years. In 2022 he appeared in several movies, including Uncharted, about treasure hunters, and Father Stu, about a boxer who becomes a priest.

In 2023 Wahlberg played an assassin-turned-father in Apple TV+’s The Family Plan, and the following year he appeared in the animal adventure film Arthur the King and, opposite Halle Berry, in the Netflix action comedy The Union. His other movies from the mid-2020s include Flight Risk (2025), an action thriller directed by Mel Gibson about a pilot transporting a fugitive, and By Any Means (2026), a drama based on true events; he played a Mafia enforcer who helps investigate crimes in Mississippi committed against leaders of the American civil rights movement.

Producing and other ventures

In addition, Wahlberg produced both films and television shows, notably the cult hit HBO series Entourage (2004–11), a comedy loosely based on his own experiences in Hollywood, and the acclaimed morality tale Boardwalk Empire (2010–14). He served as executive producer for both, and the former series was adapted for the big screen in 2015. He also appeared as himself in Wahlburgers (2014–19), a reality TV series centered on the hamburger restaurant business of Wahlberg’s brother Paul, and he was executive producer for that series.