How Madonna almost ruined Mark Wahlberg’s movie career: “She called the fucking cops on me”
As two of the worst actors in modern memory, there would have been something cruelly fitting about Madonna being the one to end Mark Wahlberg’s movie career before it had even begun, which he’s convinced almost happened when the ‘Queen of Pop’ called the cops on him in the early 1990s.
While Wahlberg’s four Razzie nominations and zero wins are a drop in the ocean compared to Madonna’s nine victories from 16 nods, they’re both equally terrible. Yes, the former has also been shortlisted for two Oscars, but he’s more than balanced the scales by making so many awful action movies and terrible comedies.
When he first signalled his intentions to segue into acting, a lot of people laughed, and rightly so. He was the frontman of the Funky Bunch; what business did he have thinking he could crack Hollywood? Leonardo DiCaprio definitely thought he was a poser, and the two were on very bad terms until they mended fences before co-starring in The Basketball Diaries.
That was Wahlberg’s second picture, with his debut coming in Penny Marshall’s 1994 comedy, Renaissance Man. Even though he only had a minor role, it nonetheless set the stage for what was to come by bombing at the box office and taking a pasting from critics, something he’d become increasingly familiar with once he graduated to becoming a leading man.
“I almost didn’t get the part,” he told Shortlist. “I got into a fight at a party in LA with three guys, and broke a guy’s nose. It was a few of Madonna’s people, so she called the fucking cops on me. Told everybody this bullshit story that I was doing shit that I wasn’t. Penny called me, saying, ‘What the fuck did you do?’, but then she was like, ‘Fuck that, I’m giving you the part anyway.'”
That probably wasn’t how their conversation went down verbatim, but it was a close enough approximation, since he did indeed get the part, and Madonna’s call to law enforcement didn’t nip Wahlberg’s nascent dreams of silver-screen superstardom in the bud.
“After that experience, I was on set every day,” he recalled. “I wanted to know who was who and what they were doing. I became fascinated by it. I started shooting short films and making home movies. Then I did The Basketball Diaries. It felt like I’d found my niche. This was what I was meant to be doing.”
Obviously, this wasn’t his first brush with the law, with Wahlberg arrested on attempted murder charges in the late 1980s, which were eventually whittled down to two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, drug possession, and criminal attempt. He pled guilty to an assault felony and was given a three-month sentence, but was released after 45 days behind bars.
With the benefit of hindsight, it may have been a blessing for cinema if Wahlberg hadn’t been able to pursue an acting career. Not only that, but it would have been hilarious if Madonna was the reason, since they don’t exactly travel in the same industry circles.
