Mark Wahlberg had to be convinced to star in ‘The Departed’.
The 47-year-old actor has revealed that award-winning director Martin Scorsese had to plead with him to star in the acclaimed crime drama, because Mark wasn’t initially interested in the project.
He confessed: "’The Departed’ was interesting because I wasn’t committed to making the movie and my agent told Marty that I was.
"Marty called me up and he was so excited about making this movie together."
However, Mark wasn’t keen on the idea of playing a supporting role to the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, and so he decided to reject the opportunity at first.
He told GQ: "I said, ‘I’m not doing the movie.’ I wanted a different part, and I wanted some other different things. We had talked about doing it for a long time, but things happened and the studio pushed back on different things. I [told Marty] I didn’t want to do it."
But Mark’s agent and the director were convinced he was the perfect fit for the role of Dignam, and so they devised a plan to get him to change his mind.
He recalled: "They sent me on a plane over the weekend to Marty’s office.
"I read the script again, and I was pretty angry and I said again I wasn’t going to do it. Marty told me, ‘Look at this part, look at what you get to do with all these people.’ He knows I’m from that [Boston] world and I talked to him about improvising and doing my own thing and he said, ‘Dude, you’re free to do what you want to do.’"
Mark Wahlberg reveals why he initially rejected The Departed
