Mark Wahlberg Once Encouraged His Mom to Date Clooney, "George Can Be My Stepfather"
Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney were co-stars in the $328 million box-office hit Perfect Storm, Wahlberg recently narrated a hilarious incident about his late mother Alma Elaine, who passed away in 2021, visiting him on the set of the 2000 movie and being immediately smitten by his co-star. “My mom came to the set and met George and got a picture and she had it on her wall,” Wahlberg revealed while appearing in a video interview with Variety.“I think she liked that picture more than she liked the picture of her own kids.” As per Entertainment, he further joked about approving his mother's crush by encouraging her to date the Oscar winner, "I want a little brother! George can be my stepfather. It’s all good!"
Wahlberg continued by imitating his mom, "'Oh, [Clooney] likes me a lot. He loves me. He told me he wants to go out with me. I told him I couldn’t.'" "She was convinced that he was hitting on her," he recalled. "I said, 'I don’t know about that, mom.'" The Ted actor continued, "I said, 'Well, f--- it, have a baby with him!'" Speaking about his film he called it 'amazing', "It was kind of centered around this tragic event," Wahlberg stated, alluding to the movie's central theme of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail's 1991 loss in a storm at sea.
"I remember living at the crow’s nest, and spending time with the Shatford family, and going fishing with my character’s brother, and really trying to immerse myself in that world, but also paying the kind of respect that I felt was necessary to the people — and ensuring to them what our intentions were, and that we were trying to make something that would honor their loved ones’ memory.” According to The Mirror, Wahlberg also shared that his father came to visit him on the sets of the 2006 movie The Departed.
"He came the day I was shooting with Jack Nicholson. He wanted to see Jack. My dad loved the cinema. He was not impressed with any of my other work until I started acting and then even with 'The Departed' he said, 'Now you can call yourself an actor. I'm not impressed with the pay cheque, I'm impressed with the performance.'" As per People, the Infinite actor is the youngest of the nine children of Alma and Donald Wahlberg Sr. After serving in the Korean War, his father became a delivery driver, while his mother worked as a nurse.
“It was always about trying to provide,” Wahlberg said during a 2011 interview with Vanity Fair. “I love my parents to death, and I think they did a remarkable job, considering the circumstances in which they lived.” The Wahlberg children split their time between Donald and Alma following their parents' divorce in 1982. Prior to her passing in April 2021, their mother became a beloved figure among fans of the family's reality TV show Wahlburgers, where she frequently appeared after their father passed away in 2008.
