They’re two of the highest-earning actors in Hollywood, but Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg had very different routes to stardom.
Leo, the son of a performance artist, was a TV regular throughout his teens and landed an Academy Award nomination at just 21. Mark, on the other hand, joined a rap group, called himself 'Marky Mark' and squeezed into some Calvins alongside Kate Moss.
Now, in an interview with Extra, Wahlberg has revealed that their divergent paths caused a rift on the set of their first film together, 1995’s critically-acclaimed The Basketball Diaries.
“It wasn’t a disagreement. It was just, like, I think we both had a specific opinion about each other, certainly,” Wahlberg said.
“I was just, ya know, as a rapper, I was just kinda out-there and loud and crazy and all this stuff, and it was a very serious movie and this very serious part, and so the director of the film [the late Scott Kalvert], he had made all my music videos, he felt like I was more than capable to play the part.”
“But no one had seen me act in a film, so I had to really kinda just go out there and prove myself,” he continued. “Once I finally got to the point where I was able to audition and read with him, then we just both kinda looked at each other, we were like, ‘Wow!’ We were literally out that night and we became fast friends.”
Wahlberg previously spoke, in less polite terms, about DiCaprio’s reaction to his casting to The Hollywood Reporter.
"Leonardo was like, 'Over my dead f**king body. Marky Mark's not going to be in this f**king movie,'" Mark said. "I was a bit of a dick to him at a charity basketball game. So he was like, 'This f**king asshole is not going to be in this movie.'"
It was 11 years before the pair worked together again, on Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
Nick Pope is the Site Director of Esquire, overseeing digital strategy for the brand.
