Mile 22 star Mark Wahlberg on family, his business empire and bromance with director Peter Berg

AS HE teams up with regular collaborator Peter Berg for the fourth time in Mile 22, Mark Wahlberg reflects on the things that really matter in life.

BACK in the day, Mark Wahlberg rolled with the Funky Bunch. These days it’s a bunch of one, Peter Berg.

In the last five years, Wahlberg has made four movies with actor turned director Berg: real-life action thrillers Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day and now Mile 22, a frenetic ride the duo hope might redefine the modern action thriller and kick off a franchise.

Clearly there’s a formidable chemistry between the two ’Bergs.

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“We push and challenge each other,” nods Wahlberg. “Pete was an actor before he was a director so he’s very good with actors. He’s sensitive to the process.”

‘Sensitive’ is a bit warm and fuzzy for one Alpha male archetype talking about another, isn’t it?

“Well, we had one fight,” Wahlberg admits, laughing. “But after that it was all love. Pete’s a guys’ guy. He reminds me a lot of my older brother, where you want to test somebody mentally. On set, Pete would be yelling right in the middle of a scene at a time when I’m trying to do this monologue. I’d be like, ‘Dude! Shut up! I’m over here trying to do my thing’. But also he’s a very physical guy, so he wanted a little taste of that, too.”

He smiles.

“Like all my older brothers … I’ve got my space on the food chain for a reason.”

Director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg arrive for the LA premiere of Mile 22. Picture: Mark Ralston /AFP

Mile 22 casts Wahlberg as James Silva, head of a paramilitary team engaged in an urgent, off-the-books operation to smuggle a foreign intelligence source (The Raid’s Iko Uwais) out of a US Embassy in Southeast Asia and onto a plane 22 miles away.

While Silva dodges — and doles out — a lot of bullets as he and his team negotiate that tricky journey, the role was also an unusually dialogue-heavy one for Wahlberg.

Silva is a man whose brain never stops, with an opinion on, and sarcastic retort for, everything.

“There was so much dialogue to learn, it was like being back in detention school when I had to write something 10,000 times,” Wahlberg sighs. “I had a stack of 30 notebooks that I filled up writing the dialogue. I would write the monologue five times a day in the notebook because it’s easier to remember once I’ve written it down; then it becomes second nature.

“I told Pete his gift for the start of the next movie would be these monologues … chopped in half.”

Mark Wahlberg as a fast-talking paramilitary man in Mile 22.

With Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) and UFC fighter turned WWE wrestler Ronda Rousey on his ground crew and John Malkovich leading the hi-tech “Overwatch” team that clears their path, Wahlberg and Co. ran riot through the streets of Bogota, Colombia for the Mile 22 shoot.

“I’d never been to Colombia so I didn’t know what to expect,” says Wahlberg. “I thought they wouldn’t be so friendly and welcoming, but I was wrong. The President and all of his people made us feel so comfortable. They were much more accommodating than a lot of cities in America.

“We were driving around, speeding and sticking machine guns out the window … normally, people would be a little nervous but everyone was just kind of looking (casually) and it was fine,” he laughs. “But also, there was military everywhere and it was hard to differentiate who was with the movie and who wasn’t.

“But it was very cool. I don’t really like going out of town because it takes me away from my family, so those three weeks without being able to go home on the weekend were the toughest part about the shoot.”

Mark Wahlberg, Iko Uwais and Carlo Alban at the premiere of Mile 22. Picture: Leon Bennett/Getty Images

Wahlberg, 47, is a father of four children ranging from eight to 14 years old, with his wife Rhea Durham.

He once had an attitude of “the more the merrier” towards his impressive brood, but eventually changed course.

“My wife wanted another one. She was adamant about having another one and I was doing everything in my power to prevent that from happening. It wasn’t until we had a teenager who would literally look at you and curse at you that she said, ‘Thank God you held out on me for so long with (having a) fifth’.”

Not just one of the most successful actor-producers in Hollywood, Wahlberg is an entrepreneur whose net worth has been estimated at $340 million. Among his diverse enterprises is a stake in the Barbardos Tridents team in the new Caribbean Premier League cricket competition, a Chevrolet car dealership in Ohio and of course the ever-expanding Wahlburgers restaurant chain.

So what does he do with his money?

“I have a lot of friends who love the phrase ‘there’s no luggage rack on a hearse’, so it’s what you do with it while you’re here that counts,” he replies. “I can be of help and make contributions that I think will be impactful to people.

Mark Wahlberg in a scene from Mile 22. Picture: STXfilms via AP

“I have my indulgences — I love shoes and watches. But other than that I’m just trying to create more opportunity for people. Every time we open a restaurant — we have 27 now and have another 10 opening this year — I’m funding a lot of those myself, so I put the money back into the business. I want to leave a business for my children to hopefully be passionate about, that they will want to take on and pass down to future generations.”

Wahlberg had no such inheritance to look forward to growing up as the youngest of nine children to a delivery driver father and nurse and bank clerk mother. His parents divorced when he was 11.

“I want to give my kids all the things I never had. I worked to make sure I could give them all the things I thought they’d want, the things that I wanted when I was younger. But I’ve learned that the most important things are family, faith and having each other.”

Mile 22 opens on Thursday.

Originally published as Mile 22 star Mark Wahlberg on family, his business empire and bromance with director Peter Berg