Mark Wahlberg’s redemptive journey
A- lister seeks pardon for his youthful crimes
( Warning: Contains language and descriptions of violence some may find offensive.)
Dorchester, Mass., 1988: A 16- yearold boy lurks outside a package store in one of Boston’s most dangerous neighbourhoods. He is high. He is trying to steal two cases of beer. But the worstlaid schemes of mice and men often go awry. Going for the beer, carried by an Asian man, the boy calls him “Vietnam f-- king shit.” He hits him with a wooden stick and, while fleeing police, hits another Asian man in the face. One of these men will be left blind in one eye.
When the police catch up with him, the boy doesn’t deny his crime. “You don’t have to let him identify me,” he says. “I’ll tell you now that’s the motherf-ker whose head I split open.” Once under arrest, the boy offers unsolicited commentary about “gooks.”
This boy is future Academy Award nominee Mark Wahlberg — before The Departed, before Boogie Nights, before Planet of the Apes, and before even his stint as rapper Marky Mark. Decades ago, Wahlberg was not known for his Calvin Klein underwear or acting ability. He was known to police for assaulting people.
Now Wahlberg, 43, wants redemption — and has asked the state of Massachusetts for a pardon for assaults committed in 1988, for which he served about 45 days behind bars.
“I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988, as well as for any lasting damage that I may have caused the victims,” Wahlberg wrote in his pardon application, as New England Cable News reported. “Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can be a role model to my children and others.” This has been a long journey. “When I was 13, 14, 15, I had a pretty serious cocaine problem,” Wahlberg told Vanity Fair in 2001.
This wasn’t just a phase. As Marky Mark, milquetoast rapper, Wahlberg was behaving badly in public just a few years after his assault conviction.
This attitude continued into his early acting career — and inspired HBO’s raunchy Entourage, a show based on his life that he executive produced.
Something had to give. Wahlberg got married in 2009 and settled down — with, eventually, four kids. He gave up drugs. He gave up tattoos. And he got his high- school diploma — last year, at age 42.
Though Wahlberg’s requested a pardon, there’s no guarantee one will be granted. The Massachusetts Board of Pardons must investigate, then recommend the pardon to the governor.
In his application, as Boston. com reported, he wrote his criminal record limits his ability to get a concessionaire’s license — a problem for a guy with a restaurant.
But even for an A- lister, a clean slate means something. “Receiving a pardon would be a formal recognition that I am not the same person that I was on the night of April 8, 1988,” Wahlberg wrote. “It would be formal recognition that someone like me can receive official public redemption if he devotes himself to personal improvement and a life of good works.”