Mark Wahlberg

Mark Wahlberg was the youngest of nine children in a working-class family in Dorchester, Boston. By his mid-teens he had dropped out of school and was in serious trouble, and at sixteen he was convicted of assault and served a short sentence in jail. He has spoken many times since about how close he came to a very different life.

His chart has a notably hidden center. He was born at 7:15 a.m. on June 5, 1971, in Boston, according to his birth certificate, and the early-morning hour puts his Sun in Gemini in the twelfth house. The twelfth is the private, concealed end of the chart, traditionally connected with isolation, institutions and confinement, and with redemption. A twelfth-house Sun tends to describe someone whose real sense of self takes shape out of view, and astrologers might note how much of Wahlberg's public story has been about turning away from his early life.

The turn came through music. His older brother Donnie was in New Kids on the Block, and in 1991 Mark had a No. 1 hit of his own as the frontman of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch with "Good Vibrations." The underwear ads for Calvin Klein made him famous in a different way. Then he turned to acting, and in 1997 his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights showed he could carry serious films.

Cancer rises in his chart, the sign of family, protectiveness and loyalty to one's roots. His career is full of Boston and family: he earned an Oscar nomination for The Departed, set in the city, and produced and starred in The Fighter, a film about two brothers from Lowell, which was nominated for Best Picture. He also produced Entourage, loosely based on his own experience of bringing his friends along to Hollywood.

Mercury, Venus and Saturn all sit in Taurus in the eleventh house, the area of friends, groups and long-term plans. Taurus is practical and acquisitive, Saturn adds discipline, and the eleventh is about networks. It describes a builder who works through his circle, and Wahlberg's business life fits: the Wahlburgers restaurant chain with his brothers Paul and Donnie, a reality series about it, and a portfolio of other ventures.

His Moon is in Scorpio in the fifth house, with Jupiter at the very end of Scorpio there too. Scorpio Moons feel deeply and hold on hard, and the fifth house governs creativity and children. He has said his family and his Catholic faith are the center of his life, and he is known for an extreme early-morning routine of prayer and exercise.

The kid from Dorchester did not get a second chance so much as build one. The twelfth-house Sun kept the hard part of the story close; the Cancer rising kept him loyal to where it started.