Mark Wahlberg loves lucky Toronto

By Stone Martindale Mar 24, 2007, 19:29 GMT

03/08/2007 - Mark Wahlberg - Shooter Los Angeles Premiere - Mann Village Theatre - Westwood, CA © Glenn Harris / Photorazzi

According to Mark Wahlberg, a last-minute decision to visit a Toronto film festival kept him off doomed 9/11 jet.

In an interview with TheStar.com, Wahlberg remembers a fateful last-minute trip he made in Toronto the evening of Sept. 10, 2001. He had originally booked a flight from his home in Boston to Los Angeles the following morning, but changed his mind and went with some friends to the Toronto International Film Festival instead.

Had he not, he would have been on one of the two L.A-bound Boston jets that flew into the Wold Trade Towers by the predominately Saudi 9/11 hijackers.

"We chartered a plane to Toronto and we had a lot of fun that night drinking Canadian beer, which is much stronger than U.S. beer. I woke up in the morning, in this very hotel (the Four Seasons) and people were calling and beating on my door. It was hard to wake up that morning. But then there was the shock of seeing the television."

Wahlberg stars in the new movie,Shooter, and plays Bob Lee Swagger, a former Marine scout sniper who is framed for an assassination attempt on the U.S. president. He has to fight to prove his innocence and to catch the real villains.

Wahlberg garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for "The Departed" this year. Wahlberg used his own experiences dealing with Boston crime and punishment and created "Dignam"  who stole the show and owned ever frame he was in from his ensemble heavyweight fellow actors.

Director Martin Scorsese, according to TheStar.com interview, let Wahlberg go with the character, which Wahlberg based in part on his mother and his life as one of nine kids growing up in a tough part of Boston. "My mother's like Jimmy Cagney. She's just tough as nails."