Last week Mark Wahlberg was quoted as saying he was mighty annoyed by his neighbors, the Beckhams, and all the paparazzi they have trolling the neighborhood. He supposedly said that he wishes they would move back to the UK, but that Britain doesn’t want them, either. I wondered if that was an accurate quote because it seemed mighty harsh and not like something you would tell the press if you were famous.

Wahlberg gave another blunt statement to the press, which makes it seem as if he did blast the Beckhams. This time he said he’s glad that he didn’t chose to take a part in the Oceans films, because they sucked and he would have hated having to act all buddy buddy with those guys while doing press for it. He then went on to admit that he was in some stinkers, too:

Is it true you turned down the chance to be in the Ocean’s films?

Yeah - and it was well worth it! The second one sucked! People tell George Clooney it’s great, but we all know it sucked. I made two bad movies instead - Planet Of The Apes and The Truth About Charlie - but doing that was better than sitting with Brad and George, telling the press how great everybody is! “We were in Europe, George was funny, then we had some wine…” - that’s not for me. I do love those guys, but I had to step out on my own.

[From Zootoday.com via Huffington Post]

Mark also spoke candidly about his past, in which he was given two years for assault in a race-related crime he committed at the age of 16 while high on PCP. He served 45 days out of that sentence. When asked what the young thug Mark would do if he ran into himself now, he said “He’d beat the shit out of him! He’d knock him down, take his wallet and tell him to go back to wherever he came from!”

He also said he’s “embarrassed” of his stint as rapper Marky Mark in the 90s and said “I thought I was the coolest guy in the world, but really I was just a jackass!”

This guy is growing on me. While there’s no excuse for the assault he committed at 16, that was over 20 years ago and he seems willing to own up to it. He’s also blunt as hell, and I agree that the second Oceans movie sucked. The third one was slightly better, but the plots of the sequels were so complicated and hard to follow. I watched them for the man candy, music and scenery, and it wasn’t a terrible way to waste two hours. Wahlberg didn’t even take his shirt off in Planet of the Apes and I sat there waiting to see his abs the entire time.

Mark Wahlberg is shown out with his pregnant girlfriend, Rhea Durham, at the LA Lakers vs Boston Celtics game 5 on 6/15/08, thanks to WENN.

Actor Mark Wahlberg, 37, is expecting his third child with his fiancé, model Rhea Durham. He calls Durham his “future wife,” and says their two children, Ella, 4, and Michael, 2, are “darlings… for the most part.” Wahlberg has a foundation for inner city at-risk youth, and he says his “biggest fear” is failing the people that depend on him. “My fear is failing as a father, as a friend, as a son. I have a lot of responsibility and a lot of people counting on me. And I know God has put me in this position to put back and try to create some opportunities for some others, show kids there is another way.” Now, he claims, he feels “like I have a real purpose.”

Wahlberg is also quoted by a questionable source as saying that his neighbors, the Beckhams, make his life difficult with all the paparazzi that are constantly trailing them and spilling over onto his property. He supposedly said they should go back to Britain, but that they don’t want them there, either:

He told the Daily Star: “That f***er lives down the road from me, man! He has to go back to the UK, because he has the paparazzi all over my house. The two of them have paparazzi everywhere.”

He added: “I was in the UK for the last week and they don’t want him back there. They said, ‘Keep him over there!’”

[From Digital Spy via Gossip Rocks]

It’s possible this quote is completely fabricated, or he may have said it jokingly to a paparazzo in the neighborhood and it got repeated out of context. You can see Mark getting pissed off like this at his family’s privacy being invaded because of the more high-profile Beckhams down the street. It doesn’t seem likely that he’d say this on the record, though.

Mark Wahlberg is starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller The Happening with Zoe Deschanel. It is out in the US on Friday, and he is shown at the premiere last night, thanks to WENN.

Good guy dad Mark Walhberg is said to have popped the question to the mother of his two children, model Rhea Durham. He bought her a huge 5-carat diamond ring and it sounds like he’s ready to make it official:

Mark Wahlberg… has decided to ask his longtime girlfriend, Rhea Durham - the mother of his two children, Ella 4, and Michael, 19 months - to marry him. According to a pal of the 36-year-old actor, he bought a $150,000, 5-carat diamond ring for Rhea, 29, on October 15. “He thinks it’s the right time,” says the pal. “They’ve been together for a long time, they have these great kids, and at heart, he’s a family man.”

[From In Touch, print edition, November 12, 2007]

Wahlberg has replaced Ryan Gosling as the greiving father in The Lovely Bones, (not because Gosling was too plump as I reported earlier, but because he had creative differences with Peter Jackson and was possibly too young) and serves as executive producer for several television series and films. He will appear in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, due out next summer, and is announced in two other films, the follow up to The Italian Job, The Brazilian Job, and as boxer “Irish” Micky Ward in The Fighter.

As Wahlberg’s career is taking off, it seems like he’s happy at home. He spoke proudly in an interview this spring about changing his son’s poopy diaper and playing horsie with his three year-old daughter. Walhberg is a devout Catholic with a rosary tattoo on his neck, and considering his faith it only seems likely that he would marry the mother of his children.

Mark and Rhea are shown at the Oscars and in photos you may have already seen at the pumpkin patch on 10/14/07. Thanks to WENN.

Praise be to everything holy. My personal prayers have been answered. Mark Wahlberg is looking to bring back the Funky Bunch. Remember his pants dropping days as the shadow of Donnie? Those good times and good rhymes like “Good Vibrations” and “Bout Time I Funk You” can be here again.

“Yeah, I miss performing with the guys. I’d like to get together with them - you know, not to make money, no to tour, but to go out there and perform - and if people still like the music and want to hear it…I miss the freedom of it - making movies requires so much more discipline. Music is a much more individual thing than doing films. You get out there, you do your thing and nobody really bothers you.”

[PR-Inside]

I know, I know. This is more of a general statement of remembering his carefree days and being young. But it could happen. I am guessing that he will be too busy making movies instead. As you might recall Mark replaced Ryan Gosling in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of “The Lovely Bones.” He is also set to star in another thriller by M. Night Shyamalan. Marky is a science teacher that comes across a few conflicts that involve a “horrific disaster” in the latest Shyamalan creation, “The Happening.”

“The first scene we shot was a five-page scene in a classroom that any other director I’ve worked with would have taken three days to shoot, but we shot it by lunch. It’s beautiful. I’ve never walked into a trailer where your sides are there and your storyboards are there for the day. He just knows what he wants.”

Picture note by Celebitchy: Mark Wahlberg, his girlfriend, model Rhea Durham and their son Michael, 19 months, are shown picking out pumpkins on 10/14/07, thanks to WENN. They also have a daughter, Ella Rae, who was four last month.

26 year-old Ryan Gosling has been replaced by Mark Wahlberg as the grieving father in The Lovely Bones, the screen adaptation of the best seller by Alice Seybold. Lovely Bones is about a 14 year-old girl who is murdered and watches from heaven as her family mourns for her.

While the young Gosling might not have seemed right for the part of the father of a teenager, he gained a reported 20 pounds in a short period of time and grew a beard to more closely resemble a middle-aged middle-class dad. And he looked the part of the majority of dads around the country, who aren’t buff and have let themselves go a little.

When he got on set to work on the film, director Peter Jackson thought he wasn’t hot enough to play the character despite being told ahead of time by Gosling that he would gain weight for the role. Gosling left due to “creative differences” last Friday, before filming was set to start on Monday. On Sunday Mark Wahlberg was announced as his replacement:

Peter Jackson was said to be quite surprised that Gosling had showed up to start work on “The Lovely Bones” looking like he’d donned a fat suit. According to sources, the 26-year-old Gosling had apparently told the director he was going to gain weight to age himself up to play the part of a grieving father, but Jackson was still expecting some movie star allure — not paunch and a beard. By Friday, Gosling had left the high-profile production over those pesky “creative differences,” and, by Sunday, he’d been replaced by 36-year-old Mark Wahlberg, who actually could be old enough to father a teenager.

[From LATimes.com via ONTD]

I find Ryan Gosling hotter as a bearded guy with a few extra pounds. Maybe that’s because he no longer seems like a kid to me and actually looks the part of a 30-something dad. Mark Wahlberg is always nice eye candy, though, and the guy can act. He’s also a bigger box office draw, because he’s well known.

It bothers me that when an actor strives to be authentically normal-looking, he’s replaced with a Hollywood ideal. It’s not like he was just passed up for a role because he looked the part, he was ousted because of it. Gosling would have played the role of a dad whose teenage daughter was killed. Statistically speaking, that character is likely to have a few extra pounds.

Medium star Patricia Arquette was told to lose her baby weight to play her tv role as a psychic mom of three. She dug in her heels, insisting that her character would be an average-sized person and that it didn’t make sense for her to be thin for the part.

This isn’t the first time that Jackson has dumped an actor right before filming was set to begin. Stuart Townsend, Charlize Theron’s boyfriend, was supposed to play Aragon in Lord of the Rings, but Jackson fired him just days before they started filming. He was replaced by Viggo Mortensen, with Jackson saying that Townsend wasn’t right for the role.

Jackson has had his own issues with weight, having lost 70 pounds in late 2004 and early 2005. He told the Daily Telegraph that he “changed [his] diet from hamburgers to yoghurt and muesli and it seems to work.” Maybe he thinks that if he could do it, middle aged dads must be able to too.

Peter Jackson is shown on 5/12/05 at the NY premiere of King Kong. Ryan Gosling is shown at the LA premiere of Lars and The Real Girl with his sister, Mandi, on 10/2/07. Thanks to PRPhotos.

In today’s obvious statements… Mark Wahlberg says he doesn’t want to work forever. Really, because most of us hope to die at 98 having put in approximately 75 years of getting up at six in the morning, sitting on our asses looking at TPS reports, then coming home to a Lean Cuisine before we fall back in bed and start it all over again. Wait, I don’t do any of those things… and neither do you Mark Wahlberg, so stop bitching! Okay he’s not bitching, my unethical self is just spinning it that way. He actually just wants to spend more time with his girlfriend and kids. Awwww! Marky Mark, you so sweet!

“Mark Wahlberg’s priorities are changing. The actor has had so much fun and success in Hollywood, they made a hit TV show about him, but the father of two, has decided to take it down a notch. ‘I’ve been really focused on me for quite sometime now,’ admitted Wahlberg, 36, who said girlfriend Rhea Durham, daughter Ella, 4, and son, Michael, 18 months, ‘are definitely the priority’ now.

“‘I figure I got a few more years to work really hard and then, you know, if I can make a movie every year and a half or something then that would be nice,’ he told reporters at the press day for his latest film, We Own the Night. ‘I don’t want to work forever.’ The realization came to Wahlberg – whose life HBO’s ‘Entourage’ is based on and which he also executive produces – on the heels of the highly successful movie ‘The Departed,’ which brought the actor his first Oscar nomination. ‘It was at a really tough time,’ Wahlberg said of starting work on We Own the Night. ‘I was about to have my second child. I had left shortly after my first child was born to work and that was a very difficult experience.’”

[From People]

Aw, that’s so sweet, why can’t all guys be like that? To consider having to spend time away from your girlfriend and new kids traumatic is indicative of really good character, in my opinion. Marky Mark (I’m always going to have to call him that) seems like a good guy, who’s made a lot of his life. Plus he’s managed to have a legitimate acting career, despite all those years he spent dropping his trousers for Calvin Klein. Not that I’m opposed to that, mind you. I think it’s funny when celebrities talk about how hard they work and how they need to take a break. I’m not saying their work isn’t challenging – I’ve never done it so I’m in no position to cast judgments. But I don’t think it’s equivalent to being a fisherman in the Bering Sea.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Here’s Mark at the Annual Michael Douglas & Friends Celebrity Golf Tournament on April 29th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

There were some doozies last night at the Emmys, with Ellen Pompeo taking the crown for worst hair and makeup in a poofy updo with 60s eye makeup and pale lips. Her dress wasn’t that bad, but the gold braided accessories just added to her dated, goofy look. Hayden Panetteire of Heroes wore a peach Marc Bouwer dress made of yards of fabric. She could have smuggled a sibling into the event under that dress. The top featured a brassiere with swirled design accented by a giant broach. An apt commentor on Just Jared said it was “a bad pregnant prom dress.”

Jennifer Morrison of House tried too hard in a silver one-shoulder flapper dress slit to the upper thigh that had too many pieces accented by thick lines and somehow managed to make the slender actress look like she had a tummy. It was pretty from the waist up, but it was too complicated overall. She almost didn’t make this list, as it’s not a terrible dress. Update: After seeing more pictures of Morrison’s dress, she definitely wasn’t one of the worst dressed and doesn’t deserve to be on this list. It only looked poorly cut from certain angles.

America Fererra, Eva Longoria, and Mary Louise-Parker all made Yahoos! best dressed top ten, but I thought their dresses were unflattering. Ferrerra usually looks gorgeous, but her Monique Lhuillier dress wasn’t cut well for her figure and I don’t like the weird spangly belt. Eva Longoria looked arrogant without reason as usual in a beaded Kaufman Franco that made her boobs look like tennis balls. She paired the silver dress with weird plain tan flats heels that look suited to a day at a country club, not an awards show. Mary Louise-Parker wore a red strapless gown that was decent, but the piece at the bottom flared out oddly and it was too tight all over.

Poor newly single Jenna Fischer of The Office looked ridiculous in a gray dress with gold leaves all over it and a big ‘ol bow underneath a strange gold braided belt. Just Jared quotes her as saying “I had to wear something that wouldn’t hurt my back,” as if trying to excuse her awful choice.

Mark Wahlberg’s wife, Rhea Durham, wore a peach cap-sleeve dress with a beaded top in a nipple-look starburst pattern and long skirt. I’ve seen it before, I’m trying to remember on whom, in another color. (On Mischa Barton at the Dead Man’s Chest Pirate’s premiere, thanks Katie for the tip.) It wasn’t as unattractive in the other color from what I remember.

Edie Falco’s dress was too tight but would have been passable if it wasn’t for all the black and white beaded flowers scattered on it. The random pattern of the beading makes them look like mistakes that you want to pick off, as if she was hit by a wind filled with sticky little daisies.

Please do not read this article if you haven’t seen the Oscar-nominated film The Departed. This movie is so good that I screamed while watching it on a plane over the holidays, waking up the guy in the seat in front of me. Even if you don’t intend on seeing it, believe me you will find it worth your while.

Martin Scorsese has semi-confirmed the news that there’s going to be a sequel to the film The Departed, making filmgoers scratch their head and wonder how he’s going to pull it off. Just about all of the lead characters meet violent ends in the film, which help it pack such a cinematic punch.

Screenwriter William Monahan, who wrote the first Departed screenplay, is said to be working on the follow up, which will include Mark Wahlberg’s Oscar nominated potty-mouthed character, Sergeant Dignam, as well as bring in a new character played by Robert DeNiro.

At least one article I read said they haven’t ruled out a prequel, which means more tortured Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio eye candy. Indeed, the film it was based on, 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, had its own prequel successor.

I would like to see a bonafide sequel, though, because the end left me wondering who fathered Madolyn’s baby and if she had anything to do with clueing Wahlberg into Damon’s role as the mole. (I said there were spoilers, sorry about that. Let me know if I missed something in the plot that would explain how Wahlberg found out. I was really tired when I watched it.)

The Departed is a critical and commercial success, having pulled in $125 million in the US, and received five Oscar nominations. It is considered the front runner for best picture at the Oscars.

Here are some pictures from the film, courtesy of All Movie Photo.

Ashton Kutcher bought Demi Moore a rare photography book for Christmas. It’s supposed to be a surprise but if Demi reads the tabloids she’ll be tipped off:

Ashton Kutcher was out doing some early Christmas shopping at Barneys New York in Beverly Hills with a buddy on Wednesday, Dec. 6, when he came across a great gift.

“He was so thrilled with the it — a $2,500 art and photography book with it’s own stand by Peter Beard. It’s a collector’s edition and only 2,500 books are available,” said an eyewitness. “Ashton said it was the ‘perfect gift’!”

And Cameron Diaz bought Justin Timberlake a coveted Sony PlayStation 3. She had one of her flunkies wait in line for hours to get the game console, but it doesn’t matter that the news is out, because Timberlake got his gift early and is already addicted to it:

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE hinted heavily to girlfriend CAMERON DIAZ that a Sony PlayStation 3 was #1 on his Santa Claus list - so she paid an assistant to camp in front of an electronics store from the wee hours onward. Here’s the Good News: After many exhausting hours fighting long lines, the assistant captured the prize and Cameron jumped for joy! The Bad News? She got so excited over snagging the coveted toy, she just couldn’t wait until Christmas to see Lover Boy’s eyes light up with Lover Joy - so she gifted it on Thanksgiving! Justin’s so thrilled he hasn’t stopped playing with the gizmo since he got it - making Cameron a PlayStation widow!

In other cute celebrity Holiday news, Mark Wahlberg says he just wants to see his “daughter’s face when she comes down the stairs” for Christmas, and that he wouldn’t mind some golf stuff too.

David Beckham has hinted that he wants some frying pans for Christmas because he loves to cook.

From The National Enquirer’s Mike Walker comes the story of an hilarious prank Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio played on player Jack Nicholson. Nicholson was in the hospital to get his salivary glands checked out and they posed as masked interns trying to give him a rectal exam!

That’s a great story that would have been made better by news of an accompany Punk’d video, but I’ll have settle for a mental image.

Matt, Leo and Jack star in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” which according to Pajiba is a well-crafted and compelling crime drama with an amazing cast.

All I need to know is that Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio are in it. Mark Wahlberg is just an added bonus.

Here’s the trailer on YouTube.

And here are some pictures from the film, courtesy of All Movie Photo.