Mark Wahlberg names the best movie of his career: “It played to my strengths”
If you try to imagine what Mark Wahlberg himself would pick as the perfect Mark Wahlberg movie, a few heavy hitters immediately spring to mind. Surely he’d go for The Departed, the Martin Scorsese crime epic that saw him pick up an Academy Award nomination for playing the hilariously foul-mouthed Boston cop Sean Dignam? Or maybe he’d opt for his heartfelt boxing biopic The Fighter, which was nominated for ‘Best Picture’?
In truth, though, Wahlberg’s vision of the perfect Wahlberg movie is neither of these candidates. While promoting M Night Shyamalan’s lamentable eco-horror The Happening, Wahlberg revealed that his pick is actually the 1997 classic that shot him to acting stardom in the first place. Interestingly, his connection to the film—which also launched Paul Thomas Anderson as a vital directorial voice—has as much to do with his career context at the time as it does with the content of the film.
Wahlberg explained: “It was always going to be difficult to prove myself as an actor because I had been a pop star and a model. But I also knew that if I did the work as best I could and didn’t go chasing after action roles or the quarterback who gets the girl, I might just be in with a chance.”
“Boogie Nights was the perfect movie for me,” he revealed, “Because it played to my strengths on one level, but it also surprised a lot of people. They didn’t think I could go dark, you know, but then, they didn’t know me before I became Marky Mark.”
Indeed, Wahlberg’s casting in Boogie Nights is one of Hollywood’s great “what-ifs” – because Anderson initially wanted Leonardo DiCaprio as his leading man. DiCaprio reportedly loved the screenplay and was very interested in playing Eddie Adams, the young LA dishwasher who becomes the adult film star Dirk Diggler during the 1970s Golden Age of Porn.
However, DiCaprio had just signed on to another production—you may have heard of it—a little independent picture called Titanic. Reluctantly, DiCaprio bowed out of playing Diggle, but he recommended his Basketball Diaries co-star Wahlberg to Anderson instead. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward to 2008, and DiCaprio was asked by GQ if he would make Boogie Nights instead of Titanic if he was given a do-over. After a long pause for thought, he reasoned, “I’m not saying I would have. But it would have been a different direction, career-wise. I think they’re both great and wish I could have done them both.”
He added, “The truth is, if I’d not done Titanic, I wouldn’t be able to do the types of movies or have the career I have now, for sure. But it would have been interesting to see if I had gone the other way.”
In the end, perhaps the movie gods helped move the chess pieces into the correct configuration here. While there’s no doubt DiCaprio would’ve been a great Dirk Diggler, there’s also no doubt that Wahlberg nailed it. And hey, Wahlberg would have been robbed of his perfect movie if DiCaprio hadn’t boarded that fatefully doomed ocean liner.
