Mark Wahlberg has certainly come a long way since his days of rapping with the Funky Bunch and modeling underwear for CK. The fearless yet shrewd actor-producer is no stranger to kicking butt and setting things straight in drama-action-thrillers. He has mastered the genre by continually demonstrating his dexterity in films such as THE DEPARTED, THE ITALIAN JOB, THE FIGHTER and WE OWN THE NIGHT. Flexing his muscles yet again, Wahlberg stars in and also produces the upcoming heist-thriller CONTRABAND, adapted from the original Nordic film, REYKJAVIK-ROTTERDAM.
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur who produced and starred in the original version of the film, CONTRABAND is about a former professional smuggler who must return to his criminal ways to fix his brother-in-law’s screw-up, while saving his family’s life. I had the pleasure of sitting down with the handsome actor to chat about identifying with these blue-collar badass characters we love to see him play, on producing great shows & films, the possibility of directing , and fighting. Sadly we ran out of time before chatting about his upcoming films, but I’m psyched to see him next year in Seth McFarlane’s film, TED. See what the chilled out family man had to say.