Mark Wahlberg Says PTA’s Boogie Nights Made Him A Real Actor

Mark Wahlberg says his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights made him a “real actor.” The Hollywood star has been a regular fixture in big-budget action films since the 2000s and has also often performed in prestige dramas, even picking up an Academy Award nomination for his role in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. His latest film, an adaptation of the Uncharted video game series, opens in the US on February 18.

Wahlberg famously began his career as a rapper with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, whose song “Good Vibrations” topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991, but he transitioned into acting in the mid-’90s. He made his screen debut in Penny Marshall’s Renaissance Man and received media attention for 1996’s Fear, which saw him play the dangerously obsessive boyfriend of Reese Witherspoon’s co-lead. However, it wasn’t until Boogie Nights in 1997 that Wahlberg earned significant critical praise as a leading man, sending his career on an upward trajectory that resulted in his current star status.

And, according to Wahlberg, that transition was more than just a change in outward perception. Speaking to Jake’s Takes about this year’s 25th anniversary of the PTA film, he recalls that experience as the first time he wasn’t afraid to go out on a limb with his performance. That willingness to look ridiculous or vulnerable in front of the camera, Wahlberg says, is what helped him become a real actor. Check out his full response below:

You know what, that was the moment I actually became a real actor, and I was no longer scared. To try stuff, to look ridiculous, to be vulnerable, and to just… just being fearless, you know? It was like, ‘Okay, gonna kinda (no pun intended) go for it and let it all hang out,’ and know that I was in an environment where I was safe. And I really stopped caring about what other people thought… I really wanted to become a real actor, and that was the moment.

Boogie Nights certainly required that fearlessness from Wahlberg, who plays an increasingly successful porn star in PTA’s film about the Golden Age of Porn in the 1970s and ’80s. The movie paired him with some Hollywood heavyweights, including Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, some of whom, like Wahlberg, went on to achieve their stardom afterwards. Though a great deal of critical praise went to the young star, he didn’t account for one of the film’s three Oscar nominations, which instead recognized the supporting performances of Moore and Reynolds.

Wahlberg has enjoyed quite the varied career, with his 2010s marked by a string of successful comedy roles in films like The Other Guys and Ted. If he is to be believed, that is all thanks to Boogie Nights, and there’s no reason that working with such a stacked cast, and under a director that has become one of the industry’s most respected auteurs, shouldn’t have had that transformative power. Perhaps another team-up with PTA is all that’s required to push Wahlberg over that Oscars hump.

Source: Jake’s Takes

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