Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan talk about The Family Plan

Hollywood star star Mark Wahlberg wants us to know that no matter how cool you think life as a celebrity might be, there is always family at hand to bring you back to earth.

Action man Mark Wahlberg has a message for Hugh Grant after the Brit’s scene-stealing turn in the new Wonka film — he played an oompa loompa first.

“I played an oompa loompa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the fifth grade.

“I remember I had a standing ovation,” he says, adding Grant “has been following my every move since I started”.

Jokes aside, Patriots Day star Wahlberg, 52, is serving up a different kind of treat for the festive season, in comedy-action flick The Family Plan, premiering on Apple TV.

In literally the daddy of all action movies, Mark plays “James Bond in a mini-van”, Dan Morgan, a father-of-three who is hiding a secret life as an assassin.

Mark Wahlberg in a scene from the Apple TV+ action movie The Family Plan. Picture: Supplied

Directed by British filmmaker Simon Cellan Jones and co-produced by Wahlberg, the plot plays on the premise that your kids have no idea how “deadly” you used to be, before you were a parent.

In this case, Dan’s wife Jessica, played by Mission Impossible’s Michelle Monaghan, teenagers Nina and Kyle (Zoe Colletti and Van Crosby), and baby Max discover Dad’s hit man past when it catches up on all of them and their family road trip to Vegas turns into a getaway.

The movie reunites Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan, who both starred in Patriots Day. Picture: Supplied

With high-speed car chases and video-game shoot-’em-up-style sequences, the movie sees the whole family get in on the drama, including one scene where baby Max is strapped to Dad as he goes head-to-head in martial arts combat, while picking up groceries in a Piggly Wiggly supermarket.

“It’s really a family coming together to fight for each other — I thought that was cool and different,” Mark says over Zoom, from New York.

“The family dynamic lends itself to having really inventive action sequences, like the supermarket one with the baby.”

The plot hangs on Dan’s kids realising their dad is kind of cool, after all.

But surely, in Wahlberg and Monaghan’s cases, their children cut them some slack, being, you know, Hollywood actors and everything?

Only to a certain extent, Wahlberg says.

Dad-of-four Wahlberg is very aware that kids don’t think their parents are cool.

“I think we’re cool when it’s convenient, getting something done for them and meeting somebody they want to meet.

“But you know, it’s fun for us, because we do live this kind of exciting life of pretend, making movies. We go home and we’re just boring parents again.

“I think all parents go through the same thing; their kids think they’re out of touch, they don’t know what’s going on.

“They don’t realise we’ve been through all these things and we’re trying to pass that experience and knowledge onto our kids to make their lives a little bit easier and help them avoid making some of the mistakes we’ve made,” he says.

There’s a funny scene when Dan and Jessica belt out Vanilla Ice in the car, to the disgust of their kids.

In real life, do Wahlberg’s kids (he has four to wife Rhea Durham – Ella, 20, Michael, 17, Brendan, 15 and Grace, 13) give him some credit, when it comes to singing? He was Marky Mark, after all.

Forget it, he says.

“For them it’s cringe. They definitely don’t want to hear that. But they did get a big laugh out of that particular scene – they like to laugh at me,” he says.

Despite the cringe in real life, on-screen Wahlberg and Monaghan are clearly having fun.

The pair have known each other for years and worked together on Patriots Day, so they had a shorthand, says Monaghan, 47.

Van Crosby, director Simon Cellan Jones, Michelle Monaghan, Zoe Colletti and Mark Wahlberg promoting The Family Plan. Picture: Getty Images

“I was so excited to get to work with Mark again and I loved the script. I felt it was something I wanted to revisit, I hadn’t done comedy in some time,” she says.

“And then, as a mom — I’ve got a 15-year-old (daughter Willow) and a 10-year-old (son Tommy) — so this movie couldn’t have been more relatable to everything that goes on in my family,” says the Gone Baby Gone star, who is married to Australian graphic designer Peter White.

She was also delighted this mum role came with a backstory and she got to be a bit of a badass.

“She had a lot of layers to her and as an actress that’s worked in this industry, fortunately, for a long time, that’s not always the case,” she says.

“As a mom of a teenage daughter, I liked that by the end there’s a lot of pride and a new understanding and appreciation … and mutual respect.”

Monaghan and Wahlberg in a scene from Patriots Day. Picture: Supplied

The film is very physical – including a knockout moment for Monaghan near the end, so who took the biggest beating making the movie – her or Wahlberg?

While Monaghan and co-star Maggie Q (The Protégé) did all their fight sequence themselves, Wahlberg took a more back-seat approach.

“I have a very fit young fellow who looks like me and I put him in there as often as possible,” he says. “Then I gave him a little high five.”

The big question is, of course, could that fellow double as an oompa loompa?

The Family Plan is out now on Apple TV