Donald Edmond "Donnie" Wahlberg, Jr.

Biography

Credit: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, as the eighth of nine children, with older siblings Arthur, Jim, Paul, Robert, and Tracey, Michelle, Debbie, and younger sibling Mark. His mother, Alma Elaine (née Donnelly), was a bank clerk and nurse's aid, and his father, the late Donald Edmund Wahlberg,Sr. was a teamster who worked as a delivery driver; the two divorced in 1982.  His paternal grandfather was of Swedish descent, while the majority of his other ancestry is Irish.

Wahlberg began performing in plays as early as the first grade. In high school, he attended a fledgling arts program and became involved in theatre, acting, writing, and directing plays.

At age fifteen, Wahlberg joined New Kids on the Block and in a few years they went from playing at high school parties to becoming a pop music sensation. Donnie was known as the "bad boy" of the group and was known to curse during live performances on awards shows. In March 1991, he was arrested and charged with first degree arson. He was accused of starting a hotel on fire with a Molotov cocktail fire bomb. In the 2001 New Kids on the Block E! True Hollywood story, band members Jordan Knight and Jonathan Knight revealed Donnie had only set off a fire extinguisher. The white smoke from it caused guests to panic, culminating in the arson charge. These charges were later reduced then dropped because he agreed to do public service commercials. In 1990, Wahlberg scored a hit on the Top 100 with "The Right Combination", a duet with Japanese pop star Seiko Matsuda who was attempting to cross over to North America from the Japanese market.

After New Kids on the Block broke up in 1994, Wahlberg focused on writing and producing for his younger brother, Mark Wahlberg who at the time was best known as the leader of the hiphop band "Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch." Both Wahlberg brothers soon began successful careers as actors.

Wahlberg's first film appearance as an actor was in the 1996 film Bullet with Mickey Rourke. Also in 1996, he appeared as a kidnapper in over his head in Ransom with Mel Gibson. Wahlberg received attention for his role in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense, playing the distraught patient of Bruce Willis's character in the opening sequence. This role was originally intended for a 13-year-old boy until Wahlberg met with writer and director M. Night Shyamalan to inquire about obtaining the rights for a theatre production and ended up getting the pivotal role.

In 2001, Wahlberg co-starred as 2nd Lieutenant C. Carwood Lipton in the Emmy Award-winning television miniseries Band of Brothers. Wahlberg also starred in the 2002–2003 NBC drama series Boomtown as Joel Stevens, an intense Los Angeles police detective struggling to keep his troubled home life private while remaining dedicated to facing the challenges of his daily work life. Graham Yost, executive producer and writer of Boomtown, had worked with Wahlberg in Band of Brothers and was so impressed by his performance that he wrote the role of Joel Stevens specifically for him.

2003 was also the year that Wahlberg starred alongside Timothy Olyphant and Jason Lee as the mentally challenged Duddits in William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of the Stephen King alien-invasion thriller, Dreamcatcher. In 2005, Wahlberg starred as Detective Eric Matthews in the second installment of the Saw series. He reprised the role in Saw III in 2006 and Saw IV in 2007.

In 2006, Wahlberg also played the significant role of Lieutenant Commander Burton in the military/boxing drama, Annapolis. In September 2006, he had the lead role of the short-lived television drama Runaway on The CW. The show was cancelled in October 2006 due to poor ratings. In 2007, he starred alongside Jason Gedrick, Ricardo Chaivera, and Nadine Velazquez in the television movie Kings of South Beach on A&E.

In 2008, he appeared in Righteous Kill co-starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino; future roles include co-starring in "Real Men Cry" with Ethan Hawke, Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Peet.

Donnie recently completed voiceover work for the 2008 installment of the Turok (2008) videogame. He is also rumored to be in Catherine Hardwicke's film version of the popular "Twilight" series.

In the spring of 2008, New Kids on the Block reunited.

Wahlberg is a body art enthusiast; he has had his left ear pierced four times, as well as piercings in his left nostril and his left nipple. He also has a tattoo of his family crest on his left arm. Wahlberg is one of the "famous faces" due to being a regular player on the online poker website Hollywood Poker which is run in conjunction with Ongame Network. He is also a prominent celebrity poker player, appearing in World Poker Tour tournaments and can be found at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles.

Wahlberg is a Boston Celtics fan, as he can be seen attending the games and joining Tommy Heinsohn and Mike Gorman announcing the game as a special guest. His favorite book is The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

Donnie married Kim Fey on August 20, 1999. They have two sons, Xavier Alexander Wahlberg (born March 4, 1993) and Elijah Hendrix Wahlberg (born August 20, 2001). Donnie & Kim separated in January 2008, and filed jointly for divorce on August 13,2008.

Contact

Please forward fan letters to the address below

Donnie Wahlberg
c/o IFA
8730 Sunset Blvd., Ste. 490
Los Angeles, CA. 90069, USA

Jonathan Baruch
Rain Management Group (RMG)
1800 Stanford Street,Santa Monica, CA 90404, USA
jbaruch@rainmanagementgroup.com
http://www.rainmanagementgroup.com

"My goal is not to be a superstar," Wahlberg says of his career. "My goal is to be super at what I do."

Mark's biography