In A Nutshell
Mark Wahlberg is one of the most famous faces in the world, appearing in more than two dozen movies, including The Fighter, The Departed, and Three Kings. The television series Entourage is based on his life. But Wahlberg wasn’t always Hollywood royalty. In his youth in South Boston, he was a vicious, drug-addicted thug tied to multiple hate crimes.
The Whole Bushel
In his teens, Wahlberg was well known to the Boston Police Department. He abused many drugs, especially cocaine, and was involved in at least three acts of racially motivated violence. In one incident that occurred when he was just 15, Mark and some friends attacked a group of African-American kids, hurling rocks at them and screaming racial slurs. The next year, he attacked two different Vietnamese men. The first, he knocked unconscious with a stick. The second man had his eye gouged out with a metal hook while Wahlberg was high on angel dust. For this crime, he plea-bargained to an assault charge to escape conviction for attempted murder. He served only 45 days of a two-year sentence.
There is little evidence that his stint in prison did much to improve his behavior. In 1992, after he’d become famous as the headliner of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, he was involved in an unprovoked attack on a neighbor which resulted in the other man having his jaw fractured. When asked if he’d ever attempted to make amends to the man he’d blinded, Wahlberg replied in the negative, claiming “You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right by other people, as well as myself, that I started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.”
Show Me The Proof
Back In The Day: Marky Mark’s Rap Sheet—Part I, Part II
Mark Wahlberg: Vanity Fair
ABC News: A Candid Chat With Mark Wahlberg