Mark Wahlberg helped ex-felon land Hollywood role after serving time

Mark Wahlberg helped an ex-felon land a role in his movie Spenser Confidential after serving a 16-year prison sentence.

During an interview with The Guardian, the actor, 48, confessed he's not a fan of "cancel culture" - where fans withdraw support from a celebrity over a mistake - and revealed how he helped one man break into Hollywood after troubled beginnings.

"Well... I don't know," he said, when it was suggested cancel culture stemmed from "morality". "I think it would be easy to look at it and say that, but having been through it and experienced it, I think it's a different thing.

"You see the gentleman who just came in here," he continued, as a man greeted the star while exiting the room. "He just did 16 years in prison. OK? He got out and I put him in the movie. That could have easily been my life. Being in a situation like that and having nothing else - certainly I made a lot of terrible mistakes and I paid for those mistakes dearly."

Mark, the youngest of nine children in a deprived area of Boston, was bullied by his older brothers, and by the age of 13 was known by police officers for his penchant for cocaine and other substances. He was sentenced to two years in prison for felony assault in the 1980s but he only served 45 days.

He insisted he turned his life around after he "took it upon myself to own up to my mistakes and go against the grain and not be a part of the gang anymore."

"So I think no, judging a person on what he's doing and where he's coming from and all those things, no, I would hope that people would be able to get a second chance in life," the Daddy's Home star added.