Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Mark Wahlberg, one of the most prolific (and nicest) guys in Hollywood, for about 25 minutes at the Four Seasons in New York following a luncheon for David O. Russell’s “The Fighter,” a film that Wahlberg fought for five years to get made, on which he served as a producer, and in which he stars as his boyhood hero Micky Ward, a boxer from the same Boston-area where he himself grew up. The film is a rousing crowd-pleaser, and Wahlberg — like his principal co-stars Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, and Amy Adams — has rarely if ever been better.
CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN TO SEE VIDEO OF OUR CONVERSATION!
Wahlberg and I discussed a wide variety of topics about his life and career: his favorite movies as a kid, many of which were boxing movies that he saw with his father (who taught him and his brothers to stand up for themselves); the event that caused him to turn away from juvenile delinquency (a brief stint in jail) and towards a more productive life (first as the rapper “Marky Mark,” then as a fashion model, and eventually as an actor); his breakthrough performance in “Boogie Nights” (1997), the first time he stopped worrying about what his friends back home would think of him and played something something other than a “tough guy”); his two previous collaborations with Russell, “Three Kings” (1999) and “I Heart Huckabees” (2003), and their recently announced plans for a fourth, “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune”; and his best supporting actor Oscar nomination for “The Departed” (2006), which was “such a big deal” to him but meant even more to his father, who passed away soon after.
The primary focus of our chat, however, was “The Fighter” and why he fought so hard and for so long to get it made: He has had a lifelong “obsession” with boxing — he grew up adoring Ward, a local hero; incorporated boxing into his music video “Good Vibrations” (1991), and was at one time attached to play a boxer in “The Black Dahlia” (2006) and a Vinnie Curto biopic. He and Ward come from very similar backgrounds — among other things, both grew up in hardscrabble Boston-area neighborhoods; have eight siblings; and spent many years in the shadow of a famous older brother who was “the apple of [his] mother’s eye.” And he promised Ward that he would get this movie made, and therefore spared no effort or expense to honor his word — he built a fully-equipped gym and boxing ring in his backyard where he trained each day for hours; paid trainers to travel with him wherever other work took him in order to get and stay in shape while waiting for financing to come through; watched video of many fights involving Micky and his brother Dickie Eklund, and moved the two of them into his home in order to study their relationship and boxing techniques; and the list goes on — all while he was also making other movies and executive producing the hit HBO television shows “Boardwalk Empire,” “Entourage,” “How to Make It in America,” and “In Treatment.”
It’s quite a story — and the best way to hear it is in Wahlberg’s own words, which you can do by checking out the videos below…
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