Mark Wahlberg: The Boogie Man

"I love women," he says, grinning broadly. "Looove them. They can control my every thought and action. I mean, never say no. I wake up feeling differently every day about different things, but I've never been attracted to men in that way. The only guys I've ever kissed were my brother and, like we said, Phil Hoffman in Boogie Nights. But I'd kiss Phil again anytime because he felt like a brother to me.'

Since Wahlberg often mentions religion and God in interviews, how does he reconcile doing Boogie Nights with his spiritual beliefs? "Well, I was raised Catholic, so I'm guilty about everything. I just hope God's a movie fan and he realizes, like my family does, that I wasn't a little naked--Dirk Diggler was a little bit naked.

"See, most movies I was offered were always, take off the shirt, run around, beat up the guy, get the girl, get killed. Everybody is so brainwashed with all these big high-tech, plane, train, bus, car, action movies that are ridiculous because so few people make the good ones. If I'm going to try to be an actor, I gotta act. At least in this movie, I don't go to fuckin' space running around with Martians and shit."

Hmmm. This couldn't be some veiled reference to the talk I'd heard about his maybe doing Paul Verhoeven's man-vs.-bugs sci-fi epic Starship Troopers? Wahlberg confirms the rumor that he spoke with Verhoeven, but explains, "I can't look at a blue screen and say, you know, "These bugs are gonna fuckin' kill us, man!'"

With that, he mimes the expression and stance of a dozen bad young actors we could name. "Maybe down the line when I start getting a little bit more mechanical, it probably wouldn't be as hard because by then I probably wouldn't give a shit. But I don't want to get to that point. I just have to be patient, go up for things I'm right for and hope for the opportunity to be in a good movie."

But blue screen or not, he did want the Boy Wonder role in Batman Forever that Chris O'Donnell got, didn't he? "Something in the back of my mind told me, 'If this movie is a commercial success, you'd still have the opportunity to go and do good movies.' But I'd only done one movie before and I didn't feel bad about not doing Batman Forever." Did he feel bad about not getting to work with John Travolta in John Woo's Face/Off? "John Woo and I had a good meeting. [But] I had to say, 'I'd like to do a movie with you like The Killer. Why aren't you doing a script that good?'"

One reason Wahlberg's gotten so far in movies is that the camera rarely fakes him out. He radiates urban authenticity. "I'm definitely as honest as possible," he asserts. "I just try to be natural. If you begin rehearsing, you're not even starting out really listening to other people's lines and stuff. It's like Jimmy Cagney. See, all I watch is old movies and I could sit and watch Jimmy Cagney forever. He could be the toughest guy in the world, then he would sing and dance in another movie and get away with it. Cagney changed a lot of my ideas because, when I first came into the movie world, I didn't want to do anything that wasn't dose to home, wasn't real, wasn't street.

"I made a really nice, small movie about gypsies with Bill Paxton called Traveller," Wahlberg continues. "Bill said something about his whole approach that hit me, which was that if he got the opportunity to audition for the part, he'd go up for it; if he got the part, he would just learn his lines and play it. Simple."

How would he rate the work he's done so far? He shrugs his shoulders and, by way of explanation, brings up Courtney Love in The People vs. Larry Flynt. "Her approach was very simple, straightforward, but I couldn't understand the overwhelming excitement about it. But, hey, she pulled the unexpected, wowing a lot of people in this town. People expect you to just suck so bad, if you do anything that's halfway decent, they think you're amazing."

What about his less-than-amazing 1993 debut in the made-for-cable picture The Substitute? "Somebody busted me for it yesterday, saying, 'I saw some movie where your throat gets sliced by a bottle.' I said, 'Wasn't me. That was Marky Mark, OK?' It was a big money offer of two days' work on a script I didn't even read. I said the lines like I was onstage at one of my concerts, only wearing other funny clothes. When I was leaving, the director told me, 'You're going to win an award for this.' I'm like, 'Oh, yeah? Thank you very much. I appreciate it.'"

Can he defend 1994's Renaissance Man? "I just wanted to meet Penny Marshall and Danny DeVito--I grew up in love with those two--I didn't want to be in the movie. By the time I walked out of the meeting, I wanted to try to be in their movie. Then I read the script, which I should have done beforehand. I literally owe Penny everything and I love her. She deserves some major butt-smooching. Renaissance Man gave me the acting bug."

Wahlberg fed that bug by working with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Basketball Diaries, and many people believe he was better in that film than DiCaprio. He deems the whole project "a hectic experience" that began with less-than-perfect bonding between the costars, but ended well. "We both went into it with a chip on our shoulder," he admits.

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