Mark Wahlberg’s journey from a cheesy rap career to modeling and then becoming an actor and producer is quite remarkable. He’s been nominated for several Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and Prime Time Emmys. He’s well-respected in the industry and gets support from fellow actors, producers, and directors, despite his messy reputation and questionable past. Today, we won’t be covering every movie and TV show he’s been in; that would take too long, and it’s not the focus of this video. Instead, we’ll dive deep into Mark’s history as a walking, talking red flag.
Mark Wahlberg was born in Boston on June 5th, 1971. Yes, that makes him a Gemini, and while his zodiac sign doesn’t really matter.
According to the LA Times, he had a tough time finding his voice as the youngest of Alma and Edmund Wahlberg’s nine children. By the time he came along, his parents were too worn out to spoil him, he shared with the newspaper. However, he did admit he managed to “get away with murder.” His parents divorced when he was 11, and his mom blamed the split on Mark’s bad behavior. She told the New York Times she was too busy working and feeling sorry for herself to realize her son was causing trouble on the streets. “I just wasn’t available to him,” she said emotionally.
Mark dropped out of school at 14 and settled into a routine of hustling, making money, stealing, selling substances, using substances, and robbing people. He mentioned he had to learn to protect and defend himself because, as a teenager, he was only five feet two inches tall and weighed 120 pounds. To keep him off the streets, his brother Donnie convinced him to join his new group, New Kids on the Block, even though Mark couldn’t sing or play an instrument. Donnie believed Mark’s dance moves would make him a good fit. However, Mark quit the group after a few months, thinking the music was too bubblegum.
In 1986, a group of fourth graders on a field trip at a beach in Dorchester—a Boston neighborhood known for its racial tensions—ran into 15-year-old Mark and his friends. Mark claimed he was drunk at the time. One of the victims told the Associated Press that Mark and his friends chased them down the street, throwing rocks and yelling racial slurs, including “kill the n-words,” until an ambulance driver intervened. “I was really scared, my heart was beating fast, I couldn’t believe it was happening—the names, the rocks, the kids chasing,” she recalled. Instead of being jailed for committing a hate crime, a Boston judge issued a civil rights injunction against Mark and his friends, essentially giving them a stern warning that another offense would land them in jail.
Did Mark learn from that incident and turn his life around? Not exactly. Two years later, at 16, Mark and his friends smoked substances belonging to a friend’s mom, unaware they were laced with PCP.
In an interview with the LA Times, Mark admitted that substances made him and his friends lose control. According to court records, Mark and his friends went out and confronted a Vietnamese immigrant who was getting two cases of beer from his car. Mark called him a racial slur and hit him over the head with a five-foot wooden stick until the man passed out and the stick broke. Court documents say that Mark then approached another Vietnamese man and asked for help hiding. When a police car drove by, Mark punched the second man in the eye and made a racist comment about his eye shape. Mark was arrested and convicted of assault and battery, possession of marijuana, and criminal contempt for breaking a prior civil rights injunction. He claimed he was intoxicated at the time and that the attacks weren’t racially motivated. He served 45 days of a two-year sentence.
After his release, he convinced Dani to help him start a music group called Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. With the success of Vanilla Ice, the timing was right for a rap career. Record labels were looking for white rappers like Mark. It’s ironic that he turned to a genre created by people he had shown such disrespect for. His debut album, “Music for the People,” came out in 1991 and included hit singles “Good Vibrations” and “Wild Side,” earning platinum status.
Mark’s real breakthrough came after a performance at a Southern California amusement park where he dropped his pants on stage, turning his shows into strip teases. He even performed at gay clubs, soaking up the attention from the LGBTQ community, though he wasn’t exactly an ally. During a December 1992 interview on The Word, Jamaican dancehall artist Shabba Ranks said that gays deserved to be crucified. Instead of denouncing these comments, Mark later joined Shabba on stage and applauded him for speaking his mind. While Shabba faced backlash and was blacklisted, Mark’s career continued without much consequence.
David Geffen, an entertainment mogul, noticed Mark’s performances and recommended him to his friend, designer Calvin Klein. Klein signed Mark to a lucrative modeling contract in the early ’90s. Mark and his underwear appeared on billboards in major cities and in magazines alongside supermodel Kate Moss. Years later, Kate revealed to Vanity Fair that she had a nervous breakdown before the photo shoot. She was only 17 at the time and was asked to pose topless in one image, straddling 21-year-old Mark. The ad campaign was released along with a cringe-worthy commercial.
“Big shout out to my man, Calvin Klein, for looking out for the drawers. And yes, she’s got freckles. Next question.”
The best protection against AIDS? Keep the Calvin’s on. Gay rights activists gathered in Times Square to protest Mark’s involvement in the campaign. But that wasn’t all he had to handle. The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence unearthed his past convictions and crimes against black people and Asians, bringing the news to mainstream media. Calvin Klein issued a statement condemning homophobia and racism, describing Mark as a reformed young man who had grown beyond his past. Realizing his career was at risk, Mark issued an apology:
“Asian Pacific Americans, African-Americans, and all people have the right to live free of violence and harassment. I want to make it clear that I condemn anti-gay hatred and violence.”
He also announced plans to work with both groups to spread the message that bigotry and violence are wrong. As part of a deal with anti-bias groups, Mark agreed to film public service announcements condemning racial and homophobic violence. Despite the drama, Mark was enjoying the money pouring in from his music and modeling career. He told Rolling Stone he spent his cash as quickly as he made it, splurging on clothes, a boat, private jets, and four-and-a-half-pound lobsters. It wasn’t uncommon for him to leave $500 tips wherever he went. He told the magazine:
“Man, my credit card bills ran from seventy thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month.”
Mark was never one to shy away from his wild side. In 1992, he dedicated his autobiographical picture book to his “baloney pony,” a term that raised quite a few eyebrows. That same year, in August, he got into a nasty fight with a man named Robert Creon. The altercation began when Creon used a racial slur against Mark’s black bodyguard. Mark reacted fiercely, kicking Creon in the face while the bodyguard held him down. To avoid criminal charges, Mark settled a civil lawsuit with Creon, and the charges against his bodyguard were dropped.
Around this time, Mark’s second album, “You Gotta Believe,” bombed, leaving him a struggling musician and underwear model with a tarnished reputation. But then, something unexpected happened. Penny Marshall and Danny DeVito saw his Calvin Klein posters and wanted to talk to him about a movie they were making called “Renaissance Man.” Despite not having read the script, Mark met with them and candidly shared how he had been faking his way through life. They told him acting was pretty much the same, so he decided to give it a shot and audition for the role of Private Tommy Lee Haywood. Mark thought, “I’ve always managed to fool the judges, the lawyers, and even my mom, so why not give acting a try?”
While waiting to hear about his audition, Mark got into another altercation, this time with members of Madonna’s entourage at a party in July 1993. The details are murky—People magazine reported that Mark used a gay slur, while Mark claimed he was blindsided by one of Madonna’s bodyguards. In the heat of the moment, he hit the man with a soda bottle, breaking his nose. Though Madonna called the cops, no arrests were made. Despite this incident, Penny Marshall still decided to cast Mark in “Renaissance Man,” a decision that marked a turning point in his life. He began to focus more on acting and tried to be a better person off the set, though he admitted that his wild side never completely disappeared.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mark revealed that he always said his prayers at night, even before being intimate with his then-girlfriend, asking God for forgiveness in advance. He admitted that he struggled with staying faithful in relationships.
“Boogie Nights” in 1997 catapulted Mark to fame, though he later expressed regret about the film due to his Catholic beliefs. In 2001, he started dating Victoria’s Secret model Rhea Durham. They had at least one confirmed breakup before announcing the birth of their first child in September 2003. Tragically, on the same day their daughter was born, Mark’s sister Debbie died of a heart attack at the age of 43. Deeply affected by the experience and after seeing Rhea endure 10 hours of labor, Mark proposed to her, and she said yes.
But was he really trying to settle down? Not quite. Just a few months later, juicy gossip sites were buzzing with news of Mark getting cozy with Jessica Alba at a party. He and Rhea called off their engagement but got back together shortly after. In 2004, Mark took on the role of executive producer for “Entourage,” and by 2006, he and Rhea had their second child. Their third came in 2008, and by then, Mark was ready to make it official. In August 2009, after eight years of dating, they tied the knot with their three children in attendance. Rhea was even pregnant with their fourth during the ceremony, who arrived in January 2010.
As Mark embraced family life, old stories about his past would pop up from time to time. Despite this, he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010. But in 2012, things took a wild turn. Dissatisfied with a scene in “Broken City,” Mark decided to improvise—or go back to his old ways. The film’s director revealed to MTV.com that Mark bought two 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, got drunk, and caused around ten thousand dollars worth of damage by throwing a bottle at an SUV and ripping off security gates from a storefront. He even started a street fight with strangers. The director said, “It was all real. None of it was staged. He was in full Tupac mode, acting like King Kong.” The film bombed, going straight to DVD, but on the bright side, Mark finally got his GED that year.
In 2014, while protests for Mike Brown and against police brutality spread across the country, Mark filed for a pardon for his past crimes. He said, “I’ve been working for 27 years to make up for my mistakes as a kid, and now, as a parent and role model, I want to show inner-city kids that anything is possible.” However, many were skeptical of his motives. The Hollywood Reporter speculated that his request was linked to his new burger chain, Wahlburgers, since his criminal record could block him from getting a business license in California and other places.
One of his victims, who was a fourth-grader in Boston when Mark and his friends attacked her and her classmates, told the Associated Press that Mark didn’t deserve a pardon. She said, “If you’re racist, you’re always going to be racist. It was a hate crime, and it should stay on his record forever.” Another victim, a Vietnamese man from the 1988 attack, told the Daily Mail, “He was young and reckless, and I forgive him. Everyone deserves another chance. I hope he gets the pardon. He shouldn’t have this crime hanging over him forever.” In September 2016, two years after applying, Mark’s pardon request was dropped because he didn’t respond to a follow-up letter.
Fast forward to June 2020, and the internet was furious when Mark condemned George Floyd’s murder on Instagram, ending his post with #BlackLivesMatter. One user shot back, “Weren’t you the one who beat up black kids?” Whether he’s delivering meals to nurses during the COVID pandemic or donating shoes to kids in Palm Beach County, some people will never let him forget his past. While Hollywood might overlook his reputation, it’s the fans who decide which celebrities they support and who they hold accountable