Unlike other Hollywood actors who come across as privileged, Mark Wahlberg is

Unlike other Hollywood actors who come across as privileged, Mark Wahlberg is always humble, approachable, down-to-earth and friendly.

The actor, who followed our very own Manny Pacquiao when he trained at the Wild Card Gym in LA and watched most of his fights in preparation for his “The Fighter” movie, talked to us about Pacman, having strong women in his life and his humble beginnings.

“The Fighter,” which also stars Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo, is about the true story of boxing champ “Irish” Micky Ward (portrayed by Mark) and his half-brother, Dickie Eklund (Christian) and their dysfunctional family.

Mark talks about his friendship with Manny. “I had an opportunity to become friends with the best fighter ever in the history of the sport who is Manny Pacquiao,” he disclosed. “He has proven that now winning his eighth title in the eighth weight class. That’s why I still have the ring in my house but I haven’t been in the gym since we did the last pick-up for the fights because it’s just too much work and I really take my hat off to those guys what they have to do and sacrifice day in and day out and with no guarantee of success.”

We asked him about having strong women in his life – having an opinionated mother and a strong wife. “Yeah I like surrounding myself with strong women,” he admitted. “I don’t like when they tell me what to do all the time but no, you need a strong woman behind you. There’s no doubt about it.

Women are in general a lot stronger than men anyway. What they have to do, giving birth, it’s like a friend of mine is getting a minor procedure of hernia and he’s terrified. He’s like how long will it take and the doctors were saying women heal a lot quicker than men. That’s just how they’re built. They’re tougher; they’re stronger, emotionally, physically. My wife is beautiful and strong and I’m very, very lucky.”

As for his working class background influencing his work attitude, Mark revealed, “Well, I hope I still have it and I take pride in the fact that I am humble and I appreciate the opportunities that I have. I don’t have any sense of entitlement. I feel like I was blessed with an opportunity to do this and I will never do anything to screw it up. If it goes away tomorrow, I’m comfortable with that because I’ve had an amazing journey but I appreciate what I have. I know there are some people who feel like well, I’m the guy, I deserve this wealth and stardom and all this attention and accolades and I’ve never felt that way. I’ve had no problem doing hard labor and the more I have to work at something, the more I feel better about myself. Things have never come easy and I wouldn’t know what to do if they did.”

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Christian, who lost a lot of weight for his role as Dickie, revealed why he did it. “Mark and I were much bigger than Mickey and Dickie,” he said. “They were around 135 pounds. I didn’t want to get obsessed with a number. I just wanted to look right. Dickie had a very squirrelly way of fighting which would have been a very different style from my body type. It was really hard-core boxing training. Dickie is just this genetic freak that just can keep going and going and never really eats anything so I think it was important to lose all that weight because otherwise nobody would have believed that Mark and I were playing welterweights.”

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Amy Adams, who plays the feisty girlfriend of Mark, revealed that it was very realistic for her to be watching Mark fighting in the ring. “It was definitely realistic,” she said. “We did it over the course of three days and there were cameras running the entire time. I have never shot like that before so you never know when you were on camera and when you were not on camera. So it really required being present in the moment at all times. It was really exciting and you are really caught up in the energy of it and in the excitement. They were really hitting each other. I have so much respect for the physical stamina that Mark had in this film. He did a great job and it felt very real. It was really intense. We had the auditorium full of extras. It was great.”

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As for Melissa Leo who portrayed the aggressive mother-manager of Mark, she told us how she made the role so riveting and memorable. “The discussions with director David Russell began before I had even really seen the script,” she disclosed. “He was revamping the script. The very first meetings were sort of confabbing about her. We talked about the stories he knew from her life. That continued throughout the process once I had met Alice Ward and gone to Lowell. Then David took all that and wrote what aspects he wanted of it. I have to say it’s fairly known that David has an unorthodox way of working. There is nothing wrong with a director talking to you while he’s shooting you. It all depends on what the conversation is and I was very modulated by his direction, much more so than I ordinarily am when I take more control over my performance. It was fine. It was David’s belief in me that I could be his Alice Ward.”

Formerly a Manila journalist, Los Angeles-based Janet Susan R. Nepales is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

E-mail the writer at jrnepales_624@yahoo.com