Mark Wahlberg has built a career around playing tough guys, so it makes sense that he would be tough in real life as well. The actor recently revealed that he refused to get surgery after injuring himself. Instead, Wahlberg gritted through the pain.
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"I prefer to try to do corrective exercises versus surgery. It's not my thing," Wahlberg explained in a recent interview with People. Wahlberg ended up tearing his meniscus, which a piece of cartilage in his knee. Think of the meniscus as a buffer against the movement of the knee. It's a fairly common injury causing both pain as well as welling.
Wahlberg revealed he ended up hurting his knee while running. He ended up landing wrong after jumping and injuring himself.
"[I was] running along a hill where we went up the embankment and just jumped off a little rock, landed on it wrong," Wahlberg said. "I kind of snapped my knee back and it tore, but when I got it x-rayed, the doctor was pretty adamant about doing the surgery because what happens is, if it locks, it can lock in a bent and flexed position and then you cannot move your knee until they perform the surgery," he continues.
Mark Wahlberg Didn't Want to Delay Filming
Besides wanting to explore alternate forms of healing, Wahlberg also didn't want to delay filming on his film Arthur the King, a tale about a marathonist and a dog. Wahlberg decided to grit through the pain to prevent production from shutting down.
"I just said, 'You know what? I got to kind of try to tough it out and see if I can get through the movie,' " Wahlberg said. In an interview with Fox, Wahlberg further explained, "I tore my meniscus the first day. And I'm producing the movie, so I couldn't shut the production down. I had to fight through. These guys, you know, adventure racers, endurance athletes, [are] incredible, absolutely incredible."
In particular, filming a key scene that involved ziplining proved to be difficult for the actor. Wahlberg admitted that he felt anxious for the stunt.
"I remember coming back from a trip home, and the first day I was back I just walked up on this platform and I hadn't seen the zip line before, and they were like, 'All right, you're going to go out with the cameraman,'" Wahlberg said. "And I was like, 'What?' I hadn't seen anybody else do it, and I hadn't been on it yet, and that was pretty nerve wracking."
