Mark Wahlberg Moved To Nevada So His Kids Could Pursue Their Dreams
The actor said he wants to give his family "a better life" than Hollywood provided.
Mark Wahlberg is a self-professed family man. The Massachusetts native prides himself on being a present, faith-driven father, and it recently occurred to him that living in California wasn’t doing his cause any good.
So, he decided to move his family of six to Nevada “to give ourselves a new look, a fresh start for the kids and there’s a lot of opportunity here,” the 51-year-old actor told The Talk this week.
“I want to be able to work from home,” the Daddy’s Home star, who shares kids Ella Rae, 19, Michael, 16, Brendan, 14 and Grace, 12, with wife Rhea Durham, said.
“I moved to California many years ago to pursue acting and I’ve only made a couple of movies in the entire time that I was there. So, to be able to give my kids a better life and follow and pursue their dreams whether it be my daughter as an equestrian, my son as a basketball player, my younger son as a golfer, this made a lot more sense for us.”
Wahlberg said he’s “really excited about the future” as he hopes to open a Nevada production studio to make it “Hollywood 2.0,” if state legislation passes a tax credit bill. He also plans on building a shoe factory and a hub for Municipal, his sport utility clothing line.
The actor, who is currently promoting his HBO Max docuseries Wahl Street, also devotes a lot of his time to fitness — working out every day before dawn. It’s “good for you,” he told E! News of his health regimen, adding, “I want to live a long time and I want to be able to keep up with my kids."
But apparently, despite being one of the most sought-after actors in the business, Wahlberg’s kids are still “embarrassed” by him and his past work. He revealed they watched footage of him on stage with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, the hip-hop group he formed in 1991, and were “mortified.”
“Even the stuff that that other people think is, like, cool in 2022, like movies and stuff? ‘Dad, it’s so dumb. Dad, that’s terrible,’” he told Ellen DeGeneres earlier this year. “They’re not my biggest fans.”
Well, they should be!