Topic: Mark Wahlberg

Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg (born June 5, 1971) is an American actor, film and television producer, and former rapper. He was known as Marky Mark in his earlier years, and became famous for his 1991 debut as a musician with the band Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. He was named No.1 on VH1's 40 Hottest Hotties of the 90's. He is well known for his roles in films such as Boogie Nights (1997), Three Kings (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000), Planet of the Apes (2001), The Italian Job (2003), I Heart Huckabees (2004), Four Brothers (2005), The Departed (2006), Invincible (2006), Shooter (2007), and The Fighter (2010). He has also served as the executive producer of the TV series Entourage and Boardwalk Empire.

Wahlberg was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of nine children, with siblings Arthur, Jim, Paul, Robert, Tracey, Michelle, Debbie (died in 2003 at age 44), and Donnie. He is of Irish, English, Swedish, and French Canadian ancestry, and is distantly related to author Nathaniel Hawthorne. His mother, Alma Elaine (née Donnelly), was a bank clerk and nurse's aide, and his father, Donald Edward Wahlberg, was a Teamster who worked as a delivery driver. His parents divorced in 1982. Wahlberg had a Roman Catholic upbringing and attended Copley Square High School (but never graduated) on Newbury Street in Boston.

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. At 15, he harassed a group of African American school children on a field trip by throwing rocks and shouting racial epithets.