ABC/Lou Rocco(CHICAGO) — While he plays a tough guy on screen, and his bad boy past has been well documented, Mark Wahlberg is now a devout Catholic who prays every day — and asks for forgiveness for one of his most acclaimed performances.
The actor appeared at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago on Friday night in an attempt to help Cardinal Blase Cupich’s efforts to attract younger people to the Church.
Wahlberg, now a father of four, explained, “I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because I’ve made some poor choices in my past.” When pressed as to which ones, he added, “Boogie Nights is up there at the top of the list.”
Wahlberg won acclaim for his portrayal of starry-eyed Dirk Diggler in the film, which followed the character’s rise to the top of the porn world, and eventually his coke-fueled fall from grace.
“I wouldn’t even read the script because I was turned off by the subject matter,” he told ABC News earlier this year. “Then you start hearing from everybody in town, ‘No, no, you have to read this thing,'” he said. “Finally, I reluctantly picked it up, read 35 pages, put it down and said, ‘This could be really good or it could be really bad.'” The chance to work with director Paul Thomas Anderson and a cast including Don Cheadle, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore was too good to pass up for a then-new actor.
Wahlberg, who as a 16-year-old spent 45 days in prison for a racially-charged attack on a Vietnamese store owner, explained to the The Chicago Tribune that the time behind bars changed his life. The victim has since forgiven Wahlberg.
“I’ve never been shy about sharing my past and the bad decisions I’ve made and being affiliated with gangs, being incarcerated, so absolutely I think they can identify with me on a personal level, and that’s why I’ve continued to try to do as much as I can to help young people,” the actor told the paper.
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