Mark Wahlberg had a funky bunch of acting roles on his resume beginning in the mid-’90s but found that he had to put more focus on producing if he was going to try to compete directly with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
Speaking with Cigar Aficionado, Mark Wahlberg said, “I started becoming a producer out of necessity…I didn’t want to sit around waiting for Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise or whoever was already established before me and were the guys at the time, and Leo [DiCaprio], to go and pass on a movie until I could get my hands on it. I was always proactive in trying to find material and things that I could produce, that I knew was right for me, create my own destiny.”
That destiny began on the big screen with Mark Wahlberg’s first major producing credit, 2007’s We Own the Night, soon adding 2008’s The Fighter, 2012’s Contraband and 2013’s Lone Survivor to his filmography. Prior to these, he started “small” at HBO as an executive producer on Entourage, partly inspired by his life and times with his buddies in Hollywood.
As far as the aforementioned stars go, Mark Wahlberg has only teamed with one: DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries and, more notably, The Departed, which earned Wahlberg his first Oscar nomination. His second would come for producing The Fighter.
As a result of managing acting, producing, an insane workout routine, and every other endeavor he’s involved with, Mark Wahlberg has kept busy. “I’m certainly working harder now than ever…Certain businesses, you kind of build them, pass them on or you exit. Hopefully my kids, we’ll see what their interests are, but I don’t think that I’ll be acting that much longer at the pace I am now. That’s for sure. Because that’s the most difficult thing.” Wahlberg has a number of movies on the slate as both actor and producer: Arthur the King, The Union and The Family Plan, which comes out this Christmas.
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