Donnie Wahlberg American Singer From Boston

Early life

Donald Edmond Wahlberg Jr. was born on 17 August 1969 in the Dorchester neighbourhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He was the eighth of nine children in an Irish-Catholic family, and his younger brother is the actor Mark Wahlberg. His mother worked as a bank clerk and nurse's aide, and his father drove a delivery truck as a union teamster; the couple divorced in 1982. He has said his first job was at the foreign-exchange office of a bank, and he later studied at Snowden International School.

Career

Wahlberg first became known as a musician. The producers Maurice Starr and Mary Alford were assembling a boy band meant to serve as a white counterpart to New Edition, and they signed a teenage Wahlberg, who was fifteen, as its first member after hearing him rap. Mark Wahlberg joined briefly but left after a few months. With Jonathan and Jordan Knight, Danny Wood and Joey McIntyre completing the line-up, the group became New Kids on the Block. Their studio albums from this first period were New Kids on the Block (1986), Hangin' Tough (1988), Step by Step (1990) and Face the Music (1994), and the band announced its break-up in 1994.

In April 2008 he confirmed to CNN that the band planned to record again and tour. Their first album as a reunited group, The Block, came out in September 2008, topped American charts and was certified gold. A reunion tour opened at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on 18 September 2008. The group followed with 10 in 2013 and Still Kids in 2024, and Wahlberg remains a member.

His acting career began with the 1996 film Bullet, in which he appeared with Mickey Rourke and Tupac Shakur. That year he also played a kidnapper in Ransom, opposite Mel Gibson. In 1999 he drew attention in The Sixth Sense, playing the patient of Bruce Willis's character in the opening sequence.

In 2001 he was cast as Second Lieutenant C. Carwood Lipton in the television miniseries Band of Brothers. The writer and executive producer Graham Yost, who had worked with him there, then wrote the part of a Los Angeles police detective, Joel Stevens, specifically for him in the NBC drama Boomtown, which ran from 2002 to 2003. In 2003 he played Duddits, a man with a mental disability, in Dreamcatcher, the adaptation of the Stephen King alien-invasion story, alongside Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee and Damian Lewis.

From 2005 he played Detective Eric Matthews in Saw II, returning in Saw III in 2006 and Saw IV in 2007, and appearing through archive footage in Saw V in 2008. In 2006 he played Lieutenant Commander Burton in the boxing drama Annapolis and starred in the short-lived CW drama Runaway, which was cancelled in October of that year. In 2008 he appeared in Righteous Kill and co-starred in What Doesn't Kill You, which he also co-wrote. He appeared in the 2011 comedy Zookeeper.

From 2010 to 2024 Wahlberg played New York police detective Danny Reagan on the CBS drama Blue Bloods, and he directed one episode in the show's fourth season. In 2025 he returned to the character in Boston Blue, a series set in the Boston area in which the detective moves to the city to be near his son after a serious injury on the job.

He has hosted the documentary series Very Scary People since 2019, and produced and starred in the A&E reality series Wahlburgers, which earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and also in Rock This Boat, Donnie Loves Jenny and Return of the Mac for Pop TV. In 2021 he appeared in the fifth season of The Masked Singer as a rooster, "Cluedle-Doo", and was unmasked after singing "Return of the Mack" in the semi-finals.

Recognition

Wahlberg was nominated for Choice Scream at the 2006 Teen Choice Awards for his work in the Saw films. In May 2025 he was inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and in October 2025 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Boston Arts Academy foundation.

Personal life

Wahlberg married Kimberly Fey on 20 August 1999; they have two sons and filed for divorce in August 2008. He married the actress Jenny McCarthy on 31 August 2014. He is a longtime supporter of the Boston Celtics, has narrated the documentary The Association: Boston Celtics, and co-narrated the ESPN film Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies with Ice Cube. With his brothers Paul and Mark he co-owns the Wahlburgers restaurants.