Wahlberg’s life as a hustler

Mark Wahlberg can’t escape his past, said Xan Brooks in The Guardian (U.K.). As a street punk in Boston’s rough Dorchester neighborhood, he was jailed for assaulting a shopkeeper. Decades later, the old neighborhood still has a hold on him, despite his success as an actor. Recently, the 41-year-old got a call from a former cell mate in trouble with the law. “He wanted to hide out with me in California,” says Wahlberg. “I said, ‘Dude, absolutely not, I’m not aiding and abetting a fugitive. Turn yourself in.’ But he didn’t listen.” The man gave him a black-and-white TV when they were both in jail, Wahlberg says, “so now it’s like I owe him for life.’’ He admits to having paid for his old chum’s lawyer in the past, and says the guy’s wife is now pestering him for money. Still, Wahlberg doesn’t regret what he learned from jail or the streets. Unlike some pampered “method” actors, he says, he has real material to draw on when conjuring up intense emotion before the camera. “Ooh, let me think about my dead cat, let me think about the color blue,” he says, grimacing. “It might work for some people but that’s not for me, dude. I have a different set of tools. All the real-life experience I have is an advantage.”

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