Mark Wahlberg’s success as a musician as part of Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch (after originally being one of the founding members of New Kids On The Block) may have been short-lived, but through the late 90s and early 2000s, the actor began to amass a reputation as a reliable supporting actor, and slowly, he garnered opportunities to prove himself in leading roles. Is his CV full of excellent performances in great films? No, the guy has made plenty of duds, and the backlash after his starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening – featured later in this list – was particularly severe, but he’s evened it out with one Academy-nominated performance, as well as countless others that have earned him considerable acclaim.
Wahlberg is one of the few actors who is equally convincing as a dramatic lead and a comedic one; his recent turns in films like The Other Guys and Ted prove that he’s a likeable leading presence and also capable of leading a film to box office glory. Still, that’s not to forget he’s not averse to a flop now and then – take his latest film, Broken City, which received a positive review from me, though is sitting at a paltry 22% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of posting.
With that in mind, here are 5 awesome Mark Wahlberg performances, and 5 that sucked…
5 Awesome Performances…
5. Tommy Corn – I Heart Huckabees
Here was one of the first films that really made people sit up and consider Wahlberg less as Marky Mark and more as a talented actor with versatility beyond expectation. In his second collaboration with David O’Russell – the director who seems most capable of bring out the best in the actor – Wahlberg surprised us all with his performance as Tommy Corn, a firefighter who enlisted the film’s bizarre existential detective agency to work out what his life is supposed to mean. I’m not the biggest fan of the film, but Wahlberg’s performance is so potent and knowing that it had to make the list anyway; given how he could easily just have been another cog in a large, extremely talented ensemble (including Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman, Jude Law and Naomi Watts), that’s quite the testament indeed.
What this performance really did is show how prepared Wahlberg was to embrace zaniness; he completely goes for broke as the eccentric but likeable character, and was singled out by many prominent critics as the best thing about the film. I can’t help but agree.
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6 Comments
Great article. Boogie Nights and Three Kings are both amazing, overlooked performances.
“If you can get past the ridiculous premise (that an 80s metal band fires their lead singer, and recruit’s Wahlberg’s fanboy character, who was in his own tribute band, to fill the role)”
Never left a comment on one of these things in my life but as a devout follower of the metal genre I have to point out the MASSIVE inaccuracy of this statement…..in defense of “Rockstar” it is actually based on the story of “Judas Priest”, when Rob Halford, who recently came out as gay, quit the band & they hired Tim “Ripper” Owens, a singer from a Priest tribute band….so not only is it NOT a ridiculous premise but is actually a true life story….plus he owned the batmobile….ha!
Yeah, the thing is that the story for Rock Star, is actually what happened with Judas Priest, which inspired the movie, although disavowed by the band. So is not a ridiculous premise as such.
Proper research would probably help your credibility. Marks older brother Donnie was in New Kids in the Block. Mark Walberg was just Mark E Mark
Yeah, that was Donnie in NKOTB not Mark. Mark did the calvin klein and rap thing, Good Vibrations and all of that. And as others have already said, Rockstar was the Judas Priest story. I know that his life story isn’t really relevant to the article, but it is really hard for people to care what your opinions are (or in my case, even read them) if you try to tell about his life without knowing anything about it. If you don’t know, don’t say anything. You should have just stuck to the movies. I’m sure you know quite a bit about movies (although, obviously not the inspiration for some movies, which as a movie fan, seems important), but maybe just stick to the movies.
Marky Mark was actually an original member of the New Kids but quit before they became hyyyooggee!! POW what a wicked awesome career this man has had!! Pretty sure he was a racist gang member until he became Marky!!