LOS ANGELES – Action-comedy The Family Plan casts Mark Wahlberg as a devoted father forced to take his unsuspecting wife and kids on the run when his past as an assassin catches up with him.

And the American actor says he, too, leads something of a double life as both a Hollywood star and family man.

But he also strives to give his four children, aged 20, 17, 15 and 13, as normal a life as possible – even though as a parent, he admits he constantly struggles to be patient with them.

Chatting with The Straits Times and other media over Zoom, the 52-year-old explains why he chose to do The Family Plan, which is streaming on Apple TV+. It sees him continue his streak of family-centric films like Daddy’s Home (2015) and its 2017 sequel and Instant Family (2018).

“For me, I just thought it would be really fun, and certainly very relatable, playing a character with teenagers.

“They’re very similar in a lot of ways to both my oldest son and daughter,” says the star, who shares his kids with American ex-model Rhea Durham, 45.

“And I thought it was a great script – lots of laughs, lots of action – but I could really relate to the family aspect of it,” he says.

In the film, Michelle Monaghan plays his wife and Zoe Colletti and Van Crosby portray his children.

Maggie Q and Ciaran Hinds also co-star.

Also relatable was the fact that the family of Wahlberg’s character had been unaware of the very different life he had led as an elite government assassin, decades before he became a boring suburban dad and successful car salesman.

This is comparable with how the actor’s own family does not know everything about his professional life.

“And also with all the things I’ve done in my past, including rapping,” adds Wahlberg.

He was briefly, at age 13, a member of the 1980s boy band New Kids On The Block alongside his brother Donnie Wahlberg, before going on to have a successful career as the hip-hop artiste and rapper known as Marky Mark.

Wahlberg was also a high-profile underwear model for American fashion house Calvin Klein in the 1990s.

So his children are constantly finding out different things about him and his past, he says.

“And when you go back home and you’re done with work, I have a tendency to bring it home sometimes. But for the most part, you want to just get back to being normal and just being dad.”

The Family Plan’s director Simon Cellan Jones has seen Wahlberg and American actress Monaghan, 47, with their respective broods – and attests they are both great parents.

“They just want to make sure their kids keep their feet on the ground. Just because we work in a supposedly glamorous business, you don’t want your kids thinking life’s different for them,” says the 59-year-old British film-maker, who also directed Wahlberg in the adventure film Arthur The King, coming out in 2024.

“I think one of the reasons they’re so good in this movie is because they’re good, real, straightforward parents in real life,” Cellan Jones says.

Even with four children, Wahlberg does not have it all figured out.

Asked what parenting skill he still finds it hard to master, he says, without hesitation: “Patience.”

“My kids don’t appreciate how hard it is for me to be patient when they’re doing or saying something really ridiculous, and to try not to explode in the way that I normally would.

“I’ll be giving them a look, like, ‘This is not up for discussion’, but they’ll keep pushing it,” he says.

• The Family Plan is available on Apple TV+.