Mark Wahlberg reflects on one of his iconic roles.
The actor and producer, 50, recently opened up Cigar lover about his initial reluctance to star in a Paul Thomas Anderson film Boogie nightsin which he played a 70s porn star named Dirk Diggler.
“When I first heard about the film and the subject matter, it didn’t appeal to me,” Wahlberg told the news outlet. “But you also have to understand, I came from the whole Marky Mark thing, taking off my pants, Calvin Klein underwear — I just didn’t know if this was just, like, the next level of exploiting me and all of that all of a sudden we’re going to lose our underwear.”
Burt Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg Boogie Nights – 1997.
G Lefkowitz/New Line/Kobal/Shutterstock
“Entertainers it just came out,” added the former Calvin Klein model. “It was supposed to be a big, controversial movie, and it ended up being, you know, a bomb. But I kept hearing about the script and, you know, there were a lot of people circling around film at the time.”
“Burt Reynolds ended up playing Jack Horner,” he said, noting “[Robert] De Niro was attached at one point, Sydney Pollack was attached, Sean Penn – you know, there’s a lot of really talented people surrounding this movie.”
Dead the star went on to say that his “agents pushed” him to read it Boogie nights script and he “was a little curious about it.”
“So I read the first 25-30 pages, and I kind of put it down,” he told the news outlet. “I thought this could be something great, or this could be absolutely horrible.”
After meeting Anderson — who went on to direct films like There will be blood and Congenital vice — Wahlberg said they “hit it off right away” and the rest is history.
“That was the movie that started things,” he added.
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During the performance atThe Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2022, Father Stu the actor revealed that he still owns the penis he wore in the film. The answer came as part of a series of quick questions from host DeGeneres.
“Where is this?” she asked him, to which he replied, “It’s locked in the safe. It’s not something I can leave out! All of a sudden my kids are looking for a spare phone charger and they pull this thing out, ‘What the hell is that?’ It wouldn’t look good.”
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Source: HIS Education