Donnie Wahlberg plays undercover cop in A&E movie

PASADENA, Calif. - Actor Donnie Wahlberg never heard of the power of positive thinking, but he’s lived it.

“I watched Oprah Winfrey the other day and she had a panel who were very successful. They were talking about the secret, the laws of attraction how you think something and you put it out there and it comes your way. I can honestly say that in my life I’ve experienced that many times without really knowing it,” says Wahlberg in a coffee shop here.

His is not just another rags-to-riches story. Wahlberg, the second-youngest of nine kids, was destined for a life of addiction and crime.

“Where I grew up - and even in my family - it wasn’t like `Am I going to smoke pot or do drugs when I grow up?’ It was, `At what age am I going to start?’ That was the question. It wasn’t `Am I going to be arrested?’ It was. `When?’

The older brother of actor Mark Wahlberg, Donnie spent much of his youth visiting another brother, Jim, in jail. “In a jail of one form or another,” says Wahlberg, who’s dressed in Levi’s, a white T-shirt, black leather jacket and black stocking cap pulled down over his ears.

“Whether it was his bedroom when he was real young and he was grounded for the whole summer - I’d be the one to spend the day with him keeping him company rather than playing baseball with my friends. Juvenile, or maximum-security prison, I was the one going to visit him.

“When you have older brothers getting in trouble it’s kind of cool. But he didn’t have to tell me to stay away from stuff. I just didn’t want to end up in his shoes.”

Though he didn’t understand what it was, Donnie says he always knew there was something better out there for him. He channeled his energy into drama and music, later co-founding the boy band New Kids on the Block and escaping what seemed to be his destiny.

He enjoyed his first flush of success with the band, but that proved very short-lived. For a time Wahlberg produced Mark’s records, but soon realized he had actualize his own talent.

As an actor, Wahlberg has been able to conjure memorable performances as a stoic paratrooper in “Band of Brothers,” a deranged mental patient in “The Sixth Sense” and an introspective cop in “Boomtown.” On March 12 he does double duty in A&E’s thriller, “Kings of South Beach.” Based on a real person, Wahlberg’s character is an undercover cop who infiltrates the heady nightlife and organized crime of Miami’s underground.

It’s been a bumpy road from boy-band wonder to gritty TV roles in “South Beach” and “Runaway.” After that first rosy flush of success with New Kids, things went downhill fast. Finally, after a year without a job, Wahlberg was given a part in “Bullet” by Mickey Rourke. The film didn’t do well, but it gave him the confidence to keep trying.

“Having been in the New Kids, I was a lot better off than most actors who come out to Hollywood,” he recalls. “I could afford to have a roof over my head and drive myself to auditions in one of my cars. It wasn’t as desperate an existence. But, on the other hand, it was more desperate because I’ve always had a problem with people labeling or pigeonholing me. I’ve always had a belief there was something better out there for me at the same time ... I hated people labeling me. When my older brother was in prison the older kids used to call me Junior Jail Bird. `You’re telling me that’s what I’m going to be? I’m not going to be that!’ And I always had that chip on my shoulder.”

Finally a very small role in “The Sixth Sense” nudged that chip, but even then Wahlberg suffered doubts. “When I was about 3 ½ weeks into my preparation in an apartment in New York with no money and no credit cards and starving myself to death (he lost 40 pounds for the role) - all for a day of work. I started to have second thoughts. What if I’m doing this for nothing? I saw that role as the opportunity of a lifetime. It was so necessary for me to go that extra mile because that script to me was so fantastic every part in the script deserved that level of commitment. But when you start to have second thoughts you wonder why am I doing this? I’m killing myself and I might end up on the cutting room floor. I said, `It doesn’t matter, you have to become this person, you have to suffer, you can be him.’ I kept going.”

Though he and his wife, Kim, have been married for seven years, they’ve been together for 15. They met when he was searching for a woman to speak Spanish on one of Mark’s records. “She walked in and ... wow!,” he smiles. They have two sons, 13 and 5.

“My goals were always very simple,” he shrugs, “to achieve something better than the status quo that surrounded me - which was drive a truck, rob a bank or be a plumber, which isn’t the worst thing. All I wanted to do was something better.”

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David E. Kelley, creator and writer of such shows as “Ally McBeal,” “Picket Fences,” “Boston Public,” is orchestrating a new romantic comedy, “The Wedding Bells,” previewing Wednesday on Fox and slipping into its regular timeslot on Friday. It’s about a family of wedding planners and all the hassles they and the wedding party suffer while orchestrating this `special day.’ Everybody has a wedding story, says Kelley, who’s married to actress Michelle Pfeiffer. “The funniest part about my wedding story is I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” he says. “My wife was so sensitive to the idea that paparazzi might invade the process and ruin it that she kept all the details secret from everybody, including me. And I remember sitting backstage, if you call it, right before I was about to walk down the aisle and not having any idea what was about to happen. I thought, `I wonder if I’m losing control of my life by getting married,’ but it worked out well.”

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One of the best new shows this winter is “Raines,” premiering March 15 on NBC. Jeff Goldblum plays a LAPD detective who’s so attuned to the personalities in the cases that he can actually materialize the murder victims in his imagination. It sounds weirder than it actually is. Authored by terrific writer Graham Yost, (“Boomtown,” “Band of Brothers”) “Raines,” also uses Los Angeles as an ancillary character in the series.

“I had one of the best times I’ve ever had in my whole life,” says Goldblum, who offers the right amount of antic and angst in the role. “This cast, everybody is so great. And meeting with Graham, he was so great, and Frank (Darabont, who directed the pilot.) I wanted to work with them. I loved the idea. I loved the script, and I loved that character.”

Yost admits that he’s infatuated with L.A. and uses its eccentric vistas to vivify the piece the way Raymond Chandler did. One of his models was the 1973 adaptation of Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye.”

Goldblum says, “I’m a big fan of ... `Out of the Past’ with Robert Mitchum, and Bogart in `Casablanca,’ where he says, `I stick my neck out for nobody,’ but we find out that he’s - pretends not to care and is indifferent but is wildly romantic and vulnerable and cares deeply and is idealistic, in fact. There was something about this character like that that I kind of fell in love with.”