He’s been a critical player in the entertainment industry for several decades, but actor Mark Wahlberg says his time in acting may be coming to an end. He said, “Well, 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.”
Wahlberg said of his four children with wife Rhea Durham, “That’s for sure because that’s the most difficult thing.” Having had his foot in many different arenas of Hollywood, Wahlberg first gained popularity as a musician with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Transitioning into acting, the actor said he quickly learned to produce to help his acting career. He told Cigar Aficionado, noting that he started with TV before transitioning to film, “I started producing out of necessity.”
He continued, “The reason why I started producing was because 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. So, I was always proactive in trying to find material and things that I could produce that I knew were right for me and create my destiny. You know, create a vehicle and an opportunity and a path for me to get to where I wanted to be and have control.”
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Wahlberg added, “Having creative control, because the second your name is above the title, you know, you reap the rewards of the success, but you also bear the brunt of the failure. If I’m going to be in that position, I’d rather be behind the wheel.” Early in his career, Wahlberg played porn star Dirk Digglre in the 1997 movie “Boogie Nights.” The decision to take the job was an example of when the now 52-year-old wasn’t necessarily in the driver’s seat.
He remembered, “When I first heard about the film, the subject matter was not appealing to me. I came from the whole Marky Mark thing, pulling down my pants, Calvin Klein underwear – I didn’t know if this was just the next level of exploiting me and now all of a sudden we have to lose the underwear. My agents kept pushing me. So, I read the first 25, 30 pages, and I kind of put it down. I was like, this could be something great, or this could be absolutely terrible.”
What the star wants next is to “work with some of the other great talents and work with the next batch of great talent.” Mark Wahlberg seems to be considering leaving the acting world not because he doesn’t want to act anymore but to have more creative control over his career. We don’t know when or if he’ll stop acting, but it’s commendable that he wants to make the change.