is Mark Wahlberg a scumbag, or a redeemed man? [View All]

[Syrinx]

I think the only movies of his that I have seen are Boogie Nights, which I thought was hilarious, and Planet Of The Apes, which I thought was vastly inferior to the original version. I've enjoyed Entourage over the years, and I've heard mostly rave reviews of Boardwalk Empire, both of which he has produced. I thought his former alter-ego, Marky Mark, was kind of pathetic. (But I guess it worked for him.)

His personal history seems to point to scumbag, but maybe he got over all his hate. I'm not sure.

Extended clip from Wikipedia follows.

Wahlberg claims to have been in trouble 20–25 times with the Boston Police Department as a youth. By the age of 13, Wahlberg had developed an addiction to cocaine and other substances.<5><6> At 15, he harassed a group of African American school children on a field trip by throwing rocks (causing injuries) and shouting racial epithets.<7> When he was 16, Wahlberg knocked a middle-aged Vietnamese man unconscious, left another Vietnamese man permanently blind in one eye, and attacked a security guard (again using racist language).<8><9> For these crimes, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty to assault, and was sentenced to two years in jail at Boston's Deer Island House of Correction, of which he served 45 days (6.16%).<8><10> In another incident, the 21-year-old Wahlberg fractured the jaw of a neighbor in an unprovoked attack.<11> Commenting in 2006 on his past crimes, Wahlberg has stated: "I did a lot of things that I regretted and I have certainly paid for my mistakes." He said the right thing to do would be to try to find the blinded man and make amends, and admitted he has not done so, but added that he was no longer burdened by guilt: "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 really 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."<12>

After landing in prison following this assault, Wahlberg decided to change his ways. In his own words, "As soon as I began that life of crime, there was always a voice in my head telling me I was going to end up in jail. Three of my brothers had done time. My sister went to prison so many times I lost count. Finally I was there, locked up with the kind of guys I'd always wanted to be like. Now I'd earned my stripes and I was just like them and I realized it wasn't what I wanted at all. I'd ended up in the worst place I could possibly imagine and I never wanted to go back. First of all I had to learn to stay on the straight and narrow." Wahlberg first relied on the guidance of his parish priest to turn his back on crime. He told his street gang that he was leaving them and had "some serious fights" with them over it. The actor commented in 2009: "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and I've done bad things. But I never blamed my upbringing for that. I never behaved like a victim so that I would have a convenient reason for victimising others. Everything I did wrong was my own fault. I was taught the difference between right and wrong at an early age. I take full responsibility".<13>

I just saw something on TV that got me to thinking about this. Pretty random, I admit.