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Tobey Maguire
came this close to losing his second spider-man gig. But with
a horse-powered summer vehicle and a saddleful of talent, maybe it
wouldn't have mattered
His hair still wet from the shower, Tobey Maguire answers the
door of his $3.5 million L.A. bachelor pad at noon on a
Sunday looking like he just woke up. He is thin and stubbled, and
when he moves through his neat California Modern living room, he
walks with a shoulders-back gingerliness.
He excuses himself and returns with a plate of pancakes and sausages
prepared by his private chef. The sausages are particularly
intriguing—they look for all the world like real pork fried to a
high-cholesterol crisp. But the vegetarian Maguire says no to swine,
and these are some kind of fauxsages made of God knows what.
"What do those taste like?" I ask.
"I don't know," Maguire says. "I'll tell you in a second." He forks
a piece into his mouth. He smiles.
"They taste good."
Everything in Tobey Maguire's Life is pretty flavorful.
In fact, the 28-year old actor has one blockbuster in the
can, Seabiscuit, an $80 million Rocky-in-horse-shoes racing pic out
this month, and he's back at work in the red-and-blue pajamas saving
the planet—for a $17 million paycheck. The first Spider-Man made
$820 million worldwide, and its star, who took home $4 million last
time, got a radioactive 325 percent raise for the sequel.
And he lives here, in a gorgeous house in an un-disclosable,
star-besotted neighborhood, though the place has a Howard Hughes
vibe going on today.
The blinds in the high-ceilinged living room are drawn against the
sun (but they're translucent enough to reveal the infinity pool
outside vanishing right into the stunning Valley view). Maguire is
similarly subdued. He's wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans and he's
clearly exhausted from the chore of shooting back-to-back movies. He
yawns a lot, and the familiar choir-boy rasp is a little raspier. He
seems barely able to raise fork to mouth.
Could his back be bothering him? There were reports that the
web-swinging superboy had hurt it while filming the horse-riding
scenes in Seabiscuit, but when I ask him, Maguire says no, it's "a
little aggravation" that he's had for a couple of years and it's
fine now. But after some pestering, he finally relents and offers
one of the few mildly revealing things he'll say this afternoon, not
counting the verdict on tempeh links: "I have a herniated disk." He
frowns and points at the tape recorder. "I don't know if I've ever
said that in a publication."
The back may be okay now, but it was at the center of the first big
Sturm und Drang of Maguire's career. As chronicled in the Los
Angeles Times, the trouble started last March, when he was wrapping
Seabiscuit. Tired from long days in the saddle, he blew off some
critical preproduction something-or-other for Spider-Man II, which
was about to start filming. Then, to protect his balky spine, he
brought in his neurosurgeon to review storyboards. More
high-stepping than he was worth, apparently: Days later, Columbia
kissed Maguire good-bye and started making googly eyes at perfectly
vertebraed Jake Gyllenhaal as the one to play the teen Web Master.
All was not lost, however. Maguire's girlfriend, Jennifer Meyer,
called her dad (Ron Meyer, head of Universal), who began a god-level
lobbying campaign to get Maguire reinstated. After some apologies
and hugs, Maguire was back in the tights. The story has an
eyebrow-raising coda: Maguire fired his longtime agent and ended up
at CAA—the firm that his girlfriend's dad helped found.
Not that Maguire really wants to talk about any of this. He won't
confirm that Ron Meyer saved the day, saying only that the studio
chief was "definitely very supportive and helpful and I appreciated
that." He says firing his agent was a separate thing, just a
business thing," and adds that he was obligated to bring in his
neurosurgeon. "If something happened to me and I didn't disclose it
fully, then I'm responsible for who knows what," he says.
So did he make any mistakes in the whole thing?
The response comes in carefully chosen words: "I guess it was not.
Taking the initiative to be. Better at communication. You know,
there were a lot of assumptions going on, a lot of mis-readings."
Then he gives me a sly grin and closes the subject via cliché: "But
it's all water under the bridge."
FINISHED WITH HIS NOONTIME BREAKFAST, MAGUIRE PUSHES HIS CHAIR BACK
AND throws a leg up on the armrest. He rubs his forearms and I
notice a small mole that has a few hairs poking out of it. I want to
ask if such a highly scrutinized celebrity can get away with having
such a conspicuous blemish, but if there's one thing Maguire seems
to hate, it's answering questions about what he should or shouldn't
be. So he sometimes resorts to telling people what they want to
hear.
"You know, I don't have a favorite color," he says, playing with a
coaster. "I'm just not that kind of guy. I can't answer those
questions but I do anyway. I try to make up the best answer I can."
So here are a few of his actual favorite things: backgammon, movies,
cigars (an unusual affection given his downward-dog-and-tofu
lifestyle), and playing hoops. His back has made this last love the
hardest to consummate.
"I could play, but it's too risky in the middle of a film," he says.
"And I don't play soft. Even though I'm one of the smaller guys out
there, I'm still banging boards and trying to block shots."
It's funny to think of this Jack Russell terrier of a guy Shaq
Attacking opponents in a game of three-on-three. But hoops reminds
me of something I read, so I ask, "You used to play with Leo,
right?" As soon as I mention the L-word, his voice drops and his
guard goes up. He rubs his head. "Yeah, I played with a bunch of
people," he says.
The same thing happens a little later, when I mention the infamous
Pussy Posse. He clears his throat so massively I'm sure he's going
to spit on me.
"First of all," he says in a disgusted but calm voice, "that name is
ridiculous. It's never anything that any of us referred to ourselves
as. I'm not a label guy."
Maybe not, but there's one label that keeps getting pegged to him:
tenacious.
Gary Ross, the Seabiscuit director, says he had a good reason for
writing the role of the brawling, Emerson-quoting jockey Red Pollard
expressly for Maguire. "They both lived a tremendous amount for
their young years," says Ross. "Tobey is a genuinely tough kid."
Tough enough to lose 20 pounds of his much-touted Spider-Man bulk to
get into the jockey silks. (Although the weight loss came with
incentive—a salary of $12.5 million, or about $625,000 per pound.)
And as an executive producer on Seabiscuit, Maguire's carrying the
project in more ways than one. The multi-tasking leaves his
Oscar-winning co-star Chris Cooper in awe.
"To juggle acting and producing, to go from Seabiscuit to Spider-Man
and still remain so creative-I just have no conception of the load
that he's taken on," says Cooper.
The pressure is certainly evident in today's lethargic,
yawn-heavy visit. But then the conversation turns to video
games—his recent discovery and current obsession—and the action hero
finally gets active. He hops up into his chair, striking a crouched
Spider-Man pose, and he's all fidgety-teenager energy. He's a
video-game "fiend," he says, rattling off favorite titles—Dead to
Rights, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, The Lord of the Rings.
"And when I say play, I mean beat," he says. "I'm a pretty good
video-gamer."
Then he offers something genuinely interesting.
"I don't like first-person games," he says. "I like the ones where
you're looking at yourself. It's great to see where you're at, see
what's going on."
Control, in other words. He wants to control the whole game, from
within and without. As a Hollywood superhero, he's under pressure
and playing in pain, but he's banging boards with the big boys
now—and he has no intention of quitting. He's too competitive.
"We get in the pool right now," he says, laughing, with just a trace
of school-bully menace in his voice, "I'll hold my breath longer
than you." rt.
© Brian Farnham, Details Magazine 2003 |
