Mark Wahlberg reflects on criminal past: ‘I made a lot of terrible mistakes and I paid for those mistakes dearly’
Written by Lindah Nduwumwami on March 23, 2020
Mark Wahlberg may be one of the biggest names on the big screen, but the Spenser: Confidential star, 48, says he doesn’t have all that much to do with Hollywood. “I’m so out of the loop with Hollywood,” the actor told the Guardian in a revealing new interview. “Other than working, I go to the supermarket. I don’t go to dinner parties on the scene, or screenings. I live in Beverly Hills, but it could easily be the English countryside, because I don’t see anyone and I don’t do anything. I don’t go to awards unless I have a movie in them. I go to bed early, I get up early, I take my kids to school and I’m with my wife if I’m not I’m working.” It’s a far cry from Wahlberg’s tumultuous upbringing in Boston, where the youngest of nine kids dealt with a challenging life both at home and outside. “When I walked out my door — violence is also all that was there,” said Wahlberg, adding that he was “always in trouble, and I was kind of little. In the circumstances where I was being preyed upon, at times, I had to protect and defend myself. It’s not an easy thing to navigate as a teenage kid who’s 5’2, 120 pounds, with grown men.” Wahlberg recognizes that he made some tragic mistakes during his youth. He found himself incarcerated after attacking a man while high on drugs in 1988, serving 45 days out of a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to felony assault. “I made a lot of terrible mistakes and I paid for those mistakes dearly,” said Wahlberg, who decided to overhaul his life and “do the work.” “I took it upon myself to own up to my mistakes and go against the grain and not be a part of the gang any more — to say that I was going to go and do my own thing,” he said. “Which made it 10 times more difficult to walk from my home to the train station, to go to school, to go to work.” Determined to “do the right thing,” Wahlberg embraced his second chance in life. Now, he channels his own experiences into his work.
