马克·瓦尔伯格（《首映》）

The Ascension of Mark Wahlberg
Amid an elite ensemble in 'The Departed,' Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg lit up the screen. Now the former street tough treks back to Boston to reflect on his life, then and now.

By Holly Millea

Beautiful, ethereal, childlike, the sunny yellow outline of a smiling girl floats dreamily against a sky blue background. Here and there, brilliant oils thin and thicken on the canvas. Up close, you can see the hair strokes of the brush Chagall held while creating this little masterpiece, "Portrait of Elise B. Goulandris." Normally, a guard would ask you to "step back, please." But the only one watching is a chubby, multicolored Chihuahua named Bogey who is parked in the sunlight streaming across the Egyptian silk rug. He yawns.


The Mediterranean manse near the top of Benedict Canyon sits so secluded you can be smack in front of it and still have to call for directions. That's when the Jamaican-accented assistant on the other end of the cell phone appears and waves a weary arm, saving another lost soul searching for Mark Wahlberg. His kind features framed in shoulder-length dreads, Russell Culpepper leads you with a lackadaisical grace into the house, motioning to a chair in the entryway. "Sit and wait here." But the painting — seductive in its innocence or innocently seductive — had pulled you further in. "All colors," Chagall said, "are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."

"Hey!" Wahlberg says, entering the living room. "Come in! I want you to meet Rhea and the kids. Can I get you something to drink first?" He walks toward the vast kitchen and pulls two bottles of water from the refrigerator. Heading downstairs, Wahlberg points out different areas of the house. Over there is his office, where the walls are decorated with framed candids of the 35-year-old actor with his favorite directors — Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries), James Foley (Fear), P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights), David O. Russell (Three Kings), Martin Scorsese (The Departed) — and with former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, both taken at the White House. Just outside is his putting green with two sand traps. And the pool and the gym house and the home he built for just his mother, Alma. She earned it. Like Chagall's mother, she gave birth to nine children. Mark's her baby.

In the living area dotted with toys, a credenza boasts pictures of his two children — Ella Rae, 3, and Michael, 11 months — as well as one tasteful nude of mother and child. Wahlberg pokes his head into his son's room and coaxes out his girlfriend, Rhea Durham, despite the mild protests that she isn't cleaned up for company. "Come on, babe," Wahlberg says, lovingly. "It doesn't matter, you look beautiful." She does — is.

Lovers of their opposites. Where he is built low and broad and strong and comes from Boston's projects, she is long and narrow and finely drawn with plush lips and feline eyes his favorite color — green. Durham, 28, who has modeled for Victoria's Secret, Dior, and Revlon, hails from Lakeland, Florida. The couple met in 2001 through a friend. Their first date was attending mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.


Five years later... "Daddy," Ella calls out. Everyone follows the small voice into the pink bedroom, where she sits on the pink carpet putting pink socks on over pink painted toenails appliquéd with white flowers. She has her father's hazel eyes and a dimpled chin. Michael, a big robust baby, vroooms around the room on his hands and knees grinning and drooling, happy to picked up and hugged by a stranger.

Wahlberg has something he wants you to see, before taking Ella to a matinee. "This is the piece of art I'm really proud of," he says, bypassing the 19th-century Van Damme-Sylva painting of Saint Joseph dominating the dining room. With Ella on his hip, he opens the door to the antechamber of the master bedroom. There, on a salmon pink marble pillar, is a four-foot, seventy-pound crystal-clear resin cross with a figure of the crucified Jesus inside, his expression imploring heaven. "This was made by Frederick Hart," Wahlberg says, his voice hushed. "He was a famous sculptor who's done all kinds of religious work, like sculptures for cathedrals and stuff. There's two of these — one in the Vatican and one here." Next to it is a plastic bottle of holy water. "Look, you can turn the cross" — he swivels the pillar top — "and see his face in the back too." From behind, the savior's expression is peaceful. Talk about a vision. At the foot of the pedestal is a small, gold brocade-covered kneeler. "This is where we come and say all our prayers, right, Ellie?" Wahlberg says, squeezing her. "What do you say when you walk through here? What do you say when you walk by?"

"I don't know."

"You know. What do you do with your hands?"

She presses them together.

"What do you say?" he whispers. "What does Daddy say every time he walks through? Do you want to say the Lord's Prayer for Holly? Are you shy?"

Ella reaches for the holy water, and her father sprinkles some in her cupped hands: "What do you do with that?"

She crosses herself, slaps her hands together, and circles her arms around his neck. "Let's go," he says, kissing her cheek. "Let's go see Happily N'Ever After."

It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
— Mark 10:25

Contrary to global warming, Christmas week is cold in Boston. Wahlberg is in his hometown to throw a party at Fenway Park for neighborhood kids "who might not have a nice holiday," he says. "We're trying to brighten up their Christmas, give them some gifts they really deserve. That's all."


Wearing baggy jeans and a green Celtics T-shirt, he sits in the Four Seasons hotel restaurant looking thinner than usual, contemplating his eggs and corned beef hash. After bulking up for his roles as football legend Vince Papale in Invincible and Sergeant Dignam in The Departed (which earned him an Oscar nomination), Wahlberg shed the carb cushioning to star in this month's conspiracy thriller Shooter, directed by Antoine Fuqua. In it, he plays a reclusive ex-Marine crack shot tapped by the government to thwart an assassination attempt. There are shades of Rambo, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor. What Faye Dunaway did for Robert Redford in the latter, Kate Mara does for Mark Wahlberg here: provide R&R — refuge and romance. "She's in that movie We Are Marshall and Brokeback Mountain," Wahlberg says. "Come to think of it, I didn't see Brokeback Mountain. I missed it!" He snaps his fingers like "damn!" "But I'm dying to get a copy of it.

"You know, I met with Ang Lee on that movie," he says. "I read 15 pages of the script and got a little creeped out. It was very graphic, descriptive — the spitting on the hand, gettin' ready to do the thing... " He smiles self-consciously. "At one point they were talking about Joaquin [Phoenix] being in the film. Joaquin, I know, and [we] like each other a lot. I think of him like a brother. You know, I've kissed my brother before, not like that, not passionate, you know. So, it was like, uh, I was kind of freaked out. But I told Ang, 'I like you, you're a talented guy, if you want to talk about it more... ' But, uh, [chuckles] thankfully, he didn't, uh, he didn't call me again.

"But I should see it. My mother loves that movie. She loves it." As does his makeup artist. "He's an openly gay man who I've worked with for ten years now. Right after Boogie Nights, there were those rumors going around that I was homophobic. So he purposely took the job to confront me. He's been with me ever since. He called me and said, 'Didn't like Brokeback.' But then of course he saw it for the second time and the third time and the fourth time and 'It's the best movie ever made!'" Wahlberg shakes his head, smiling. "He brought the movie to the trailer while me and all the guys were shooting Invincible. All football guys, macho shit through the roof. So he comes in [high, sing-song voice], 'It's movie day! You guys gotta watch this movie!' After five or six minutes, most of the trailer is empty." Bottom line: "I didn't rush to see Brokeback, it's just not my deal. And I know how talented Ang Lee is. Obviously, it was done in taste — look how it was received. And it's a beautiful thing. It's just not necessarily my thing." On the other hand, "I don't know how many times I saw Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in Bound — loved it."

Ang Lee was onto something. Wahlberg's Catholicism, predilection for the opposite sex, urban upbringing, rapper background, plus his gay following from his Calvin Klein underwear modeling days, even those old homophobic rumors, would have made for some seriously inspired casting. He would have pulled them in from all sides. "Mark has all that quality of toughness, but also this softness to him," observes Fuqua, who's used to directing hyper-masculine men: Bruce Willis in Tears of the Sun, Denzel Washington in Training Day, and Clive Owen in King Arthur. "Onscreen, Mark's like a young Russell Crowe." But offscreen, the two actors are different animals. "Mark still has that sweetness," Fuqua says. "He's been in the movie business and music business for a long time — tough businesses — but it hasn't darkened him."


For the last three years, he's been in television too, as executive producer of HBO's Entourage, the Golden Globe-nominated hit based on his friends and experiences in Hollywood. Vince the actor is Mark the star. "Ari" is his agent, Ari Emmanuel, "Johnny Drama" is his cousin Johnny "Drama," who isn't really his cousin but an old friend who choreographed The Marky Mark Workout video in 1993 and is now acting (he had a small part in Invincible). "Turtle" is his childhood friend Donkey. And "Eric," a.k.a. "E," is Eric Weinstein, 52, Wahlberg's right arm and close confidant.

There are others yet to be immortalized. Jamal runs lines with Wahlberg (and has also scored small parts in his movies). He met Brian, his trainer, on Invincible. And then there's Henry, the comic relief. "I asked Mark at one point, 'What does Henry do?' Because I was confused by it all," says Kate Mara. "And Mark said, 'He makes me laugh.'"

"My life is so boring now, the writers have to pull from other people's lives, which is good," Wahlberg says. "I'm so happy that I can wake up at nine in the morning as opposed to going to bed at nine in the morning. I got to do everything I wanted at night. And now I get to do everything I want during the day: up at 6:30, play golf, come back, work out, pick my daughter up at school... I got a chicken in the oven at 7:30 in the morning and that thing is scraped clean. I've got a little rotisserie — a Ron Popeil. I used to see him at the gym." Wahlberg wonders, "Did he invent that thing you put up against your head and cuts your hair? Anybody can cut their hair. It's got suction...."

Wahlberg has barely touched his corned beef hash. He checks his watch, a gold, anniversary edition Rolex with a green face that he picked up in Vegas. "I bought one for Rhea too," he says, only half joking when he adds, "I told her, 'I got you something so you'll let me play golf for a month without any kind of argument.'" It's hard to reconcile Wahlberg's religious practices — he doesn't miss mass, even on location — with his unwedded bliss. "I'm not marriage shy; I'm divorce shy," he says. "People jump into marriage and then get divorced."

"The poor kid is a guilt-ridden Catholic," says his brother Jim. "'I have kids! I'm not married!' But it's a matter of timing and allowing someone to grow up. You gotta love somebody enough to let them do that. I always think, 'Dude! What are you doin'? Go the George Clooney route, for God's sake!'"

Wahlberg slides out of the oxblood banquette and shrugs into his black leather bomber jacket embroidered with Four Brothers across the back. In the lobby, his entourage is waiting. He introduces Weinstein, a short, dark, handsome teddy bear in a velour tracksuit with a commanding air and a Bronx accent. ("Eric is like a father to the crew," Culpepper says. "Eric is the elder, so you got to give Eric all props.") A roadie for Kiss, Blue Öyster Cult, and Patti Smith; a recovered addict (clean 22 years); and onetime drug counselor, Weinstein met Wahlberg in 1993 when he was hired to teach him and Leonardo DiCaprio how to shoot up and act high for their roles in The Basketball Diaries.


There's Fred "Nacho" Lum, who's known Mark since they were 14 and makes mad money eating food on a dare. "Last night, I ate a ball of wasabi with hot sauce on it," he says, grinning, mum as to how much Wahlberg paid him. ("These guys just want to do the things they think is funny," Culpepper sighs. "But when he gets an ulcer... Money is the root of all evil. I'm not going to clown myself to get a couple of dollars.")

And then there's Hillal, a 12-year veteran. A locksmith and contractor, Hillal got a small role in Three Kings "because he looked like a real terrorist," Weinstein says. "At the airport, he goes one way, I go the other."

"He's so sweet, he wouldn't hurt a fly," Wahlberg says. "We always introduce him as our friend from Iraq, but he's from Israel. He speaks Arabic and Hebrew — taught me every bad word in both languages."

"The only difference between a saint
and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
— Oscar Wilde

The drive to Fenway Park winds Wahlberg through his old childhood haunts. "This is downtown Boston going to Dorchester," he says, guiding the uninitiated. "Look around. I robbed and stole from a lot of these buildings. We didn't have enough in our own backyard to steal, so we liked to go to other places. Get on the bus, steal bikes, ride them back. That was at like 12, 13.

"Look, that's the South Bay jail where a lot of my friends are right now, unfortunately." He honks his horn. "A lot of my friends are either in prison or no longer living. Donkey died a year ago tomorrow. He had an asthma attack, went the hospital, checked himself out..." A happier sighting: "That's the church for St. Martin's right there." Wahlberg crosses himself and kisses his fingers. "That's where my nephew went to school. He was the first one in our family to be able to go to a private school. And hopefully, he'll be the first to go to college. The last school that I graduated from was the Phyllis Wheatley Middle School."

Wahlberg turns. "So, this is Dorchester Ave. That corner is where the fight happened where I got arrested when I robbed the guy that was coming out of the liquor store." He shakes his head with regret. ("A lot of the trouble that Mark got into was following the path that I was blazing," Jim will tell you. "I was in state prison, and Mark was sent to the house of corrections. I had to write to people there to take care of him." For the past five years, Jim has been the head of the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation.) Wahlberg points to an ancient church. "This is St. William's parish, where Father Flavin was," he says. The priest has known him since he was 13 and is like a member of his family. Turning onto another street, Wahlberg slows. "This house right here," he says of a dingy blue box. "I stole the same car from that poor guy about 15 times. He would find the car somewhere in the neighborhood, bring it back in the yard, and then I'd come early in the morning and take it again." The Artful Dodger can't resist smiling. "I'd drive around, hang out — it was my transportation. And one day he came out as I was taking off with it. And I locked the window and he's trying to get in the car. It was pretty funny.

"This is all our old stomping grounds here — Savin Hill." He looks around at the abandoned streets. "See how many churches there are around here? Churches and bars." Every church induces another sign of the cross and a kiss. ("Irish Catholic neighborhood," says his brother Bob, also an actor, who had a role in The Departed. "You grow up, and you learn to drink and fight.")

Wahlberg made a return to his faith in his twenties. "I wasn't living right," he says. "After I got out of jail, I stayed out of trouble but then once I started to have some success... I got comfortable again and started fucking around. I want to live a good, happy, healthy life. I have so many opportunities, and if I don't do the right thing I'm going to mess everything up.

"How can I ride around for a half hour and not see anybody I know? It's crazy. Nobody's around anymore... We'd hang out behind the Boys' Club right here. This alley here, it was where we'd do all that we liked to do." One can imagine.

"Those are triple-deckers," he says, pointing to the rows of attached three-story houses. "Different families lived on each deck." On the corner is a tiny market. "This is the store we always used to go to," he says, slowing, ducking down to see inside. "There's George! He's still in there! That guy used to sell weed outta there. Crazy!" George is an old gray-haired man now. Says Wahlberg, "He looks good, because he looked that old when I was a kid."

He pulls his car onto Peverell Street and stops, staring at a putty-colored triple-decker with cement steps. In a quiet voice: "We used to live right here, on the first floor. Me and my mother and my brothers and sisters." (Arthur, Paul, Robert, Michelle, Tracey, James, Debbie, and Donnie. His parents divorced when Wahlberg was 11.) "I used to climb out the window and sit on the porch and sell weed and whatever else we had, and my mother would go nuts."

He's still not too old for her to discipline. "Two years ago," Wahlberg says, smiling, "she came out when I was getting a lifetime achievement award from the Boys' Club. She came out with Father Flavin, and I said, 'I gotta lot stuff going on, I'm going to be very busy.' And I put her in the limo with him. On the way home, they got lost for, like, ten minutes up in the hills. And I come in the house and the crazy Boston Irish came out of her. She pushes me into the chair: [hilariously imitating his mother] 'Who the fuck do you think you are? A fuckin' movie star? You're not a fuckin' movie star! You're nothin'!' Like Jimmy Cagney. We laugh about it now. And she regretted it. But she puts me in my place every time she feels it's necessary." ("He has never let me live this down," Alma moans. "I'm like, 'Oh, stop! I don't want to remember it.' But he needed that at the time. I said, 'Look, you may be Mark the actor to everybody, but to me, you're my son.' ")


He seems reluctant to go. Ask the last time he'd seen the place. "A while," he replies, pulling away. "A long while."

Wahlberg parks in the underground garage in Fenway Park next to Eric's navy Cadillac SUV, which Weinstein has christened "the Blue Jew Canoe." Inside the building, nearly 300 kids will be having the time of their lives, eating pizza, hot dogs, chili, running around, breaking up the dance floor. Wahlberg will be hugged and kissed and photographed with each one, signing everything handed his way. Before they go, they will receive backpacks stuffed with Nike and Reebok products, courtesy of the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation.

Walking out from under the garage, Wahlberg is greeted by the parking attendant, who smiles with recognition and says, "Welcome home, brother."

"Do what Bogey does: uses the ears
to listen, eyes to see, nose to smell the food,
mouth to eat it. He uses all those
things. Bogey uses all his sense. That's
why he's a good dog."
— Russell Culpepper, Wahlberg's left arm
and unwitting prophet


Rosary beads, each row of ten a different primary color, swing from the rearview mirror of Wahlberg's black Mercedes SUV. "I have them in all the cars," he says. "They're all blessed. Father Flavin just came back from Rome and brought me a set that were blessed by Pope Benedict."

Father Flavin, whom Alma affectionately calls Flavor Flav, "does all of our christenings and weddings and presided over Debbie's funeral." Three years ago, Debbie, in her forties, lapsed into a coma and passed away from kidney complications. "It was horrendous," Alma says, her voice heavy. "She died the day Ella was born. Mark wanted to fly out so badly, and I said, 'Mark, you need to be there for the arrival of your daughter and I need to be here for the passing of mine.'"

Ella, sitting in her car seat in the back, is pinked out down to her lipstick, the pink rhinestones on her pink high tops catching the sun and casting rainbow prisms on every surface. "This morning she crawled into bed with me," Wahlberg says. "And I said, 'What are you doing?' And she said, 'I'm just looking at you sleeping, Daddy.' And I said, 'Why don't you sleep? Close your eyes.' And she said, 'It's morning.' I said, 'Not yet. It's five in the morning, but it's not morning yet.' And then I turned on the cartoonsies for her, right?"

He looks back at her and smiles. "Tell Holly how much you like Superman." Ella shakes her head no: "I like Wonder Woman."

"You like Superman too. Who came to your birthday party?"

"Real Superman," she says, all nonchalance.

Ben Affleck?

"No," Wahlberg says. "The other guy. What's his name? Superman Returns. The Bryan Singer movie."

Brandon Routh? "Yeah." He laughs. "Looked a lot like him."

Ella: "I'm three and then I'll be four."

Mark: "She's three going on ten." She'll be dating soon. Wahlberg does not find this even remotely funny. "I don't tell her 'no' very often right now," he says. "But when it comes to going out, dating, all that stuff, Daddy's not having any of it."

Ella has an announcement to make: "Last night I wore my new ice skates." "In just a Pull-Up!" Wahlberg says, laughing. There's a Kodak memory. Guess what color they are. "Ella, whose girl are you? Say it!" He's not the boss of her. She looks at him, You gotta be kidding me. "I'm gonna cry," Wahlberg says, crying like an Oscar winner. Ella crosses her eyes. He knows when he's been beat, but he's not giving up without a consolation prize: "Okay, but I'm gonna need kissies when we get out of the car."

Wahlberg pulls into a full-service island at the gas station, rolls his window down, and hands the attendant a fifty, asking him to please put forty dollars in and keep the change. The motorist on the other side, twentysomething and vaguely familiar, calls over, "Hey, man, you were the sickest one in Departed. You were awesome." Wahlberg, ever gracious and totally sincere, replies, "I appreciate that, man. I like your work, too."

Culpepper, who's been following in another car comes up and crosses his elbows, leaning on the lowered window. Like Eric Weinstein, he's beyond entourage; he is a serious part of Wahlberg Inc. The two met back when the actor was a rap star. "My friend Ital Joe, the reggae artist," Wahlberg says. "Me and him did a record together and we were shooting a video up in Harlem, and he owned a music store on 126th and Lexington."

"I worked with him, running the store," says Culpepper, who was also close friends with Tupac Shakur. Adds Wahlberg, "I was the only white dude in the hood. And then Russell came out to California to work with Ital Joe and then Joe passed in a car accident."

"And Mark said, 'You know, Russ, why don't you work for me?' It's a blessing, you know?"

For someone so young, Wahlberg has seen a lot of death. "I was just thinking about that last night," he says. "I was looking at a picture of my sister Tracey's wedding and my whole family is there except for Debbie. And I was looking at Ellie's picture and her picture... Five of my friends died last year. Like Rhea, for instance, no one in her family has ever passed away. It's a lot of loss. But I truly believe that they're with Jesus and I'll see them again some day. So you have to kind of be happy about that part of it — that they're in a better place."

For the first time, Ella's quiet. All ears. The kid doesn't miss a thing. "I was driving her from school the other day, and she was sitting in the back, and she said, 'Daddy, why are you sad? Daddy, you look sad.' I told her" — he reaches back and squeezes her leg and so sweetly tells her again —

"'Anytime Daddy gets sad, I think about you and I get so happy!'"