The Dailies

Mark Wahlberg might play a polished policeman in “We Own the Night,” but the Boston-born actor has confessed to some chronic criminal behavior in his younger years.

“I had so many brushes with the law growing up in an Irish community in Boston and being the youngest of nine,” he told FOX. “I started breaking the law at a young age; I had a complete disregard for authority. But all the experience I had punching and being arrested innumerable times has proved valuable to my acting career.”

But given Wahlberg’s familiarity with bad behavior, he is making sure to shield his own children from the hazards of Hollywood and doesn’t even intend to send them out to school.

“The only thing I can really do is isolate them and try to keep them away from TV and society,” said the protective parent of Ella, 4 and Michael, 1. “I will most probably home school them as well. But above everything I will try to just guide and protect them as much as I can. I want to be with my kids every step of the way.”

“If” anything, time has taught Janet Jackson that matrimony is messy and sensuality is much simpler without a signature.

After two marriages and two divorces, the 41-year-old longtime lover of record producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri doesn’t desire another diamond.

“In this day and age, I feel we don’t need that piece of paper. For myself I don’t need that to validate what I have with someone,” Janet told FOX at the premiere of her new movie “Why Did I Get Married?” last Thursday. “It’s about a spiritual commitment and finding your soul mate and really exchanging vows with one another, and I think that’s enough for me at least.”

And even though the music mogul doesn’t want any nuptials, she still has a strong objection to “open relationships.”

“No way, not for me,” she said. “Why get involved in a relationship if you want to mess around with other people? It doesn’t make sense.”

And while Janet did divulge that she is back in the studio putting together some new songs for her own album, Pop Tarts has also heard murmurs that the suddenly svelte star and her singing siblings are all fine-tuning tracks with her bro Michael Jackson, who is supposedly set to make a musical comeback.

There are two things we know for sure about Lindsay Lohan: She’s not too skilled at staying single, and she knows how too run “rings” around her romantic interests.

The “Mean Girl” looks set to get back on a positive track after leaving a Utah rehab facility last weekend. Plus, she even met a man out of the star-studded spotlight to offer her some seductive support.

Li-Lo told OK! Magazine that just before her check-in at Cirque Lodge, she hit “rock bottom.” But it seems lucky Linds left the lodge sporting a sparkling stone on her ring finger.

“Yes I am seeing someone — I’m just taking it day by day,” said the screen star.

Apparently, his name his Riley Giles and he’s a Californian snowboarder … but let’s hope he doesn’t let Lohan take the downhill slide.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But did the creator of the comic strip “Funky Winkerbean” take the “awareness” part too far?

Yes and no, say some.

The decision by cartoonist Tim Batiuk to have Lisa Moore, the cartoon strip’s wife, mother and lawyer, succumb to breast cancer last week has sparked both praise and anger, ABC News reports.

“People have been incredibly kind and generous,” cartoonist Tim Batiuk told ABC News, adding that hundreds of fans have e-mailed him about the story line.

But others are unhappy. “You are a man who seems to be without any idea of the pain (you) are inflicting,” wrote one grandmother on TheCancerBlog.com. “You do not have the right to put this horror in a family newspaper.”

Dawn Herb could face up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $300 (euro212).

“It doesn’t make any sense. I was in my house. It’s not like I was outside or drunk,” Herb told The Times-Tribune of Scranton. “The toilet was overflowing and leaking down into the kitchen and I was yelling (for my daughter) to get the mop.”

Herb does not recall exactly what she said, but she admitted letting more than a few bad words fly near an open bathroom window Thursday night.

Her next-door neighbor, a city police officer who was off-duty at the time, asked her to keep it down, police said. When she continued, the officer called police.

Mary Catherine Roper, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia, took issue with the citation.

“You can’t prosecute somebody for swearing at a cop or a toilet,” she said.

The mother of missing British 4-year-old Madeleine McCann believes she’s being persecuted because of her looks, and thinks that if she “had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic,” a London newspaper reported Tuesday.

The parents of Kate McCann, in a remarkable interview in the Liverpool Daily Post, said their daughter “feels persecuted, not by the general public who have been extremely supportive, but by some sections of the media.”

“Kate is a very sensitive, caring person and one of the most maternal people I know — she puts me to shame,” Madeleine’s grandmother, Susan Healy, told the newspaper.

Madeleine was 3 when she disappeared May 3 from her parents’ hotel room in the resort city of Algarve, Portugal, while the couple dined at a nearby restaurant. The investigation initially focused on a possible kidnapping, with numerous reported sightings throughout Europe, none of which turned up positive.

Portuguese police early last month turned their investigation toward the couple, naming both Kate McCann and her husband Gerry as official suspects. Without sufficient evidence to charge or hold them, the couple was allowed to return to England.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney says he was determined to maintain his dignity during his divorce from former model Heather Mills, according to an interview due to be published Tuesday.

The 65-year-old singer-songwriter vowed not to talk about the separation, telling Radio Times Magazine the experience was “a very painful thing.”

“As Winston Churchill once said, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going!’” McCartney told the magazine. “The only solution is to remain dignified. If I don’t keep a silence about it, I lose this idea of being dignified.”

McCartney’s divorce has become the most sensational marital breakup in Britain since Prince Charles and Princess Diana parted ways more than a decade ago, and the divorce is widely expected to be Britain’s most expensive. McCartney and Mills announced in May of last year that they were splitting after four years of marriage.

Journalists thronged Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice Thursday when the pair appeared before a judge amid reports that they were close to a settlement.

“It’s been a difficult time,” McCartney told the magazine. “But music is a great healer. Music is the therapy for me. In fact, going through difficulties has only concentrated my desire to make good music.”

McCartney also spoke of his admiration for the British monarch, calling Queen Elizabeth II a “babe.”

“I’ve got a lot of time for the queen. She’s fun, she’s funny, she’s amazing,” he said. “The queen’s a babe!”

“I know what fame is. But she knows what real fame is.”

Apparently, this is the “in” thing in the US these days… trash the wedding dress after the wedding ceremony! Never mind that the wedding dress had cost them $2,500!

Look at this bride who didn’t mind the mossy swamp… she’s wearing a lovely Vera Wang wedding gown!

I love the gown! And I cannot believe she ruined it right after the wedding. Tsk tsk… some brides are even setting fire to their gowns. Their reason: they are feeling “anti-wedding” after the ceremony and anyway they are not going to wear the gown again.

Aargh!