It’s not easy being an actor, even one who’s been through rough-and-tumble shoots like Mark Wahlberg. While the actor may have survived Cybertron and the Planet of the Apes, he injured himself severely while shooting “Arthur the King.” 

Wahlberg told Entertainment Tonight that he’d undergone a lot of training to properly portray central character Michael Light.

Unfortunately, he incurred an injury during the first day of shooting, forcing him to revise his plans. “I tore my meniscus the first day, so all my training went out the window.” The actor chose to suffer through his torn tendon, worried that if he took time off to recuperate his health, the plug would be pulled on the production.

“I just felt like, you know, it took a long time to get the movie off the ground and we were in the middle of COVID, and if I had shut it down, I don’t know if we would’ve got it up and running again. So I just kind of toughed it out, and I found different ways of getting through.”

Authenticity was essential to Wahlberg, as “Arthur the King” is based on the real-life story of an adventure racer whose team attracts the attention of a stray dog.

The pup tracks them across the entirety of the Dominican Republic and over 400 miles of terrain, as they try to win their competition. With that in mind, Wahlberg admitted that performing while injured helped him understand his character better.

Mark Wahlberg said his injury helped him relate to his character’s pain

The unfortunate pain of his injury did give Mark Wahlberg one small window into the life of Mikael Lindnord, the adventure racer whose life is fully fictionalized in “Arthur the King.” “I got to understand the suffering a little bit more than I wanted to,” he told Entertainment Tonight.

Wahlberg is no stranger to the athletic life, though his exercise routine is likely less strenuous than that of Lindhord, whose life has been filled with athletic accomplishments — adventure racing, after all, requires proficiency in bicycle racing, kayaking, and various land and sea sports.

The actor has his tie into the athletic world — speaking to Fox News in 2023,  he confessed that he’s always wanted to be an athlete.

“I’ve always wanted to be an athlete, and that’s why I think any time I’ve had the opportunity to play an athlete in a movie I’m kind of living vicariously through all those characters,” Wahlberg admitted at the time.

He’s no stranger to performing in sports-related films, having appeared in the football movie “Invincible.” He also founded an athleisure brand called Municipal in 2019.