Mark Wahlberg Was Cast in ‘Fear’ Thanks to Former Rival Leonardo DiCaprio
Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio initially got off on the wrong foot. But DiCaprio would later help Wahlberg nab one of his most villainous roles in the cult classic Fear.
Mark Wahlberg nabbed ‘Fear’ thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio
Wahlberg had a rocky start with Leonardo DiCaprio. Before doing The Basketball Diaries, the pair met each other at a charity Basketball game, where Wahlberg rubbed DiCaprio the wrong way. Ironically, it was a film partially about basketball that ended up reuniting the two. But DiCaprio was adamant about not working with Wahlberg, and Wahlberg didn’t think DiCaprio was right for Diaries.
“He was not into it,” Wahlberg once told NJ. “And, I tell you, I wasn’t convinced he was the right guy to be playing this street legend. . . . But, you know, when we finally got in a room together, we hit it off. There was like this instant level of respect, and we went out that night partying and have been friends ever since.”
According to Huffpost, their friendship would also help benefit Wahlberg down the line. DiCaprio was eventually wanted for the 1996 thriller Fear. The movie followed a young girl becoming involved with a mysterious and potentially dangerous young man. But DiCaprio didn’t think he was right for the role. It was then DiCaprio recommended Wahlberg for the film, but director James Foley wasn’t convinced of the idea.
“’What,’” Wahlberg remembered Foley shouting at DiCaprio. “’Are you out of your f***ing mind?’”
Still, the Titanic star was adamant that Wahlberg was right for the project.
“’You should hire this guy,’” Wahlberg recalled DiCaprio saying.
Reese Witherspoon didn’t want to shoot her love scene with Mark Wahlberg
Reese Witherspoon played the unsuspecting girlfriend of Wahlberg’s mysterious character. The thriller would feature Wahlberg and Witherspoon in a love scene that somewhat surprised the Legally Blonde actor. So much so that she objected to the take to the Fear director.
“I had no control over it. It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no,” Witherspoon recently told Harper’s Bazaar. “It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”
Witherspoon went on to share that the situation motivated some of her own career decisions later on as an actor. It further inspired Witherspoon to make an impact in the film industry.
“I’m certainly not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative,” she said. “It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”
Mark Wahlberg felt people were afraid of him after doing ‘Fear’
Wahlberg wanted to do other types of roles after playing villains and tough guys on his first couple of features.
“People were afraid of me after roles in Fear and Basketball Diaries,” Wahlberg once told Sun Journal.
He somewhat broke away from this kind of typecasting by doing films like Boogie Nights. The following years also saw Wahlberg doing a few films that he admitted he wasn’t too proud of.
:I did Truth About Charlie because I wanted to work with the guy who directed Silence of the Lambs [Jonathan Demme] and I wasn’t really into the original Planet of the Apes but it was a chance to work with Tim [Burton, the director] and The Italian Job was the only script that had come along in a while that was a traditional character-driven movie,” he said.
