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For a while back there, it wasn't looking too good for Tobey
Maguire. Crazily ambitious, having chosen to leave school and forge
an acting career at the tender age of 13, he had conspicuously
failed to become the new De Niro. Beyond that, his best buddy,
Leonardo DiCaprio had hit massively with Titanic and was one of the
biggest stars in the world. So Tobey - sensitive, struggling Tobey -
was better known as a member of DiCaprio's posse. All feelings of
loyalty apart, it must have hurt.
And then it all changed. After a string of classy, award-winning
productions - Pleasantville, The Cider House Rules, Ride With The
Devil and Wonder Boys - suddenly Maguire was hot. And then came
Spider-Man. Taking $114 million in its first weekend, it slaughtered
many of cinema's proudest records. Seabiscuit followed, another
smash. Maguire was hotter than hot, certainly hotter than DiCaprio.
And, his family having been dirt-poor for so many years, he was very
rich, taking $17 million for Spider-Man 2. Tobey's certainly enjoyed
some major ups and pitiable downs. Here's how he did it.
Tobias Vincent Maguire was born on the 27th of June, 1975, in Santa
Monica, California, to very young parents. His father, Vincent, a
chef and sometime construction worker, was just 20. His mother,
Wendy, a secretary, was even younger, at 18. The couple would marry
some two years after, but separate the same year. Later, Tobey would
be presented with a half-sister, Sara, and a half-brother, Timothy,
to add to half-brother Vincent, born in '72.
It was an extremely tough time for Tobey. Shuttling between his mum
and dad, his aunts, uncles and grandparents, he moved up and down
the coast of California constantly, and on up to Oregon and
Washington. Never settling anywhere, he made no real friends, and
was an outsider - if not downright unpopular - wherever he went. One
good thing about having no friends, says Tobey, was that he spent
his time watching people, wondering what made them tick. This was
partly because he had no one to talk to, partly to see if he could
trust the watchee. In the future, it would make it easier for him to
inhabit a character's skin.
Worse still, with his parents struggling to make ends meet, the
family was always poor. His mother worked hard but still they spent
time on Welfare, using food stamps and Medi-Cal. Tobey recalls
running from a store when his mother paid with stamps (he's sorry
now, recognising that his actions added to his mother's own
humiliation). For father Vincent, the situation never got any
better. In 1993, he robbed a bank in his hometown, Reseda and,
caught just one hour later, was jailed for two years. It was taken
into account that he was desperate, and this was a first offence.
Intelligent and precocious, hiding his insecurity under a cloak of
arrogance, Tobey grew up fast. At an early age, he decided he wanted
to be a chef, like his dad. But a neighbour who was an entertainment
manager advised him to try showbiz and Wendy, who'd always wanted to
be an actress herself, offered to pay him $100 (a mighty sum for the
Maguires) if he would take Drama instead of Home Economics. He did,
and proved straight away to have some talent. Coupled with this,
there was his ambition. Tobey has said that his insecurity made him
feel that people were always nay-saying him, doing him down. He says
this gave him "an angry ambition that cannot be stopped", jokingly
adding that "I look forward to finding a therapist and working on
that".
So, talented, arrogant and angrily ambitious, he quit High School at
the age of 13 (13!) and, continuing his school work part-time and
beginning to study acting, went after child actor work. He was cast
in several TV ads, for McDonalds, Atari and Doritos, and made his TV
debut in a Rodney Dangerfield special for HBO in 1989, securing his
union card.
But it was in 1991, aged 15, that his career really took off. He
uttered a single line in an episode of Blossom, a comedy about a
girl's life in a houseful of men. There were a few more in Roseanne.
Then there was Eerie, Indiana. Not much, but connections were being
made. When auditions were announced for a TV series based on Ron
Howard's Parenthood, Tobey went along, and met another young actor
looking for a part. This was Leonardo DiCaprio. The pair became good
friends, and Tobey managed to wangle a small part in Leo's next
production, alongside Ellen Barkin and Robert De Niro in This Boy's
Life.
Even better, having failed to get a part in The Wonder Years after
"like, 10 auditions", Maguire had been cast as the lead in a new Fox
series, called Great Scott! This concerned the life and fantasies of
teenager Scott Melrod and was a clear forerunner of the likes of
Ally McBeal and Malcolm In The Middle. The critics were charmed, but
audience figures were not high. Only 13 episodes were shot, and only
six were screened, between October and November, 1992. But Tobey did
make a new friend, Kevin Connelly, who co-starred as Scott's best
friend, Larry O'Donnell.
After This Boy's Life came more work with DiCaprio and Connelly.
Actually, whether it was work or not depends on who you ask. What
certainly happened was that the three actors, along with Amber
Benson and several others, were filmed in a bar, flirting, joking,
and discussing drink, drugs and love. Then, in 1998, after
DiCaprio's Titanic success and Maguire's first steps into the
big-time, the film appeared again, put together as a feature named
Don's Plum. Leo and Tobey sued to prevent its release, claiming they
had believed it to just be an acting exercise and had received an
agreement that it would never be released as a feature. Co-producer
David Stutman sued them back for - amongst other things - trying to
stop him making a living. Eventually a secret agreement was reached.
Money changed hands, and it was agreed that Don's Plum would never
be commercially released in Canada or the USA.
Unfortunately for Leo and Tobey, who rather wished it would go away,
the movie was picked up on by the art set in Europe and screened at
the Berlin Film Festival in 2001. It was clearly still a sore point
as, when the producers put an ad in Daily Variety in 2000, thanking
the pair for their "amicable spirits, gentlemanly behaviour and
wisdom beyond their years", they'd sued again.
Don's Plum aside, 1994 had brought proper work, too. There were a
couple of TV movies. First, Spoils Of War, where Kate Nelligan
wanted to get back with ex-hubbie John Heard, from whom she'd split
bitterly, but was too nervous to contact him. Luckily, their son
Martin (Tobey) bumps into dad and plots to rebuild the family
himself. Then there was A Child's Cry For Help. Was it possible that
the lovely Pam Dawber, formerly Mindy to Robin Williams' Mork, could
be secretly poisoning her son?
And then there were the movies, in Maguire's mind the true test of
greatness. There'd been a tiny role in SFW, where Stephen Dorff
became a national hero for not giving a damn during a hostage
crisis. Then there was his first lead role, in the comedy
horror-fest Revenge Of The Red Baron. Here Mickey Rooney (himself an
example to Tobey - a child star that kept going) played an ex-WW1
pilot who, due to a family curse, is threatened once more by his
former arch-enemy, the fearsome Red Baron. Only this time the Baron
is not there in the flesh, he's possessing a model tri-plane and
wisecracking away as he enacts his vile exploits. Tobey played
Mickey's grand-son, struggling against the weirdness. And it wasn't
half bad, gaining some respect amongst true genre experts.
From the outside, it looked like it was going OK, but really Tobey's
insecurity was now getting the better of him. Both to cover his own
emotional vulnerability and to make people laugh (and thus like him)
he'd use his intelligence to cut other people down. He was basically
mean, far from how he wanted to be. And it all came to a head when
he was 19, down in North Carolina, filming the indie hit Empire
Records. He had auditioned for a lead part, alongside Liv Tyler and
Rene Zellweger, but was given only a small role. Another kick in the
teeth, another reason for insecurity. Maguire has since said that he
recognises his abandonment issues and a terrible fear of poverty.
They made him, as his friends have put it, ridiculously competitive
- at basketball, poker, even backgammon. And down in Carolina,
amongst all these smart, budding stars, he lost it, found that he
could not communicate at all. "I was a little self-destructive", he
later admitted. He asked director Alan Moyle to let him go, and he
went home, spending the next few months re-evaluating his life and
attitudes. His scenes hit the cutting-room floor.
When he returned to work, it was with a vengeance, as parts quickly
came his way. He played Hot Rod Brown, class clown, a super-loser
who's rescued from Flunking Hell by funky guardian angel Whoopi
Goldberg in her series, Tales From The Whoop. Then came Griffin
Dunne's Oscar-nominated short, Duke Of Groove, where he played Kate
Capshaw's self-conscious son, attending a party with his mum and
several top singers, including Janis Joplin. Next up, he was Ann-Margret's
step-son in Seduced By Murder, based on the true tale of Diane
Borchardt, who persuaded some teenagers to murder her husband in
Jefferson, Wisconsin. And then there was another lead role, in
Joyride. Here Tobey played the son of a motel owner. One day a
beautiful, enigmatic woman shows up in a cool car. Tobey, desperate
to impress Amy Hathaway, a guest who's giving him the eye, steals
the motor, and takes off with Amy and a friend. Unfortunately, they
get tailed by detective Benicio Del Toro and, infinitely worse, part
of the beautiful car-owner's enigma is that she's a hit-woman.
Tobey's profile was now raised to the extent that decent movie roles
showed up. In The Ice Storm, directed by Ang Lee (Sense And
Sensibility, Crouching Tiger), he was the relatively clear-headed
narrator as two families in Seventies suburbia, experimenting with
sex and intoxicants, approached moral and physical ruin. His dad is
Kevin Kline, drinking to forget trouble at work. Mum is Joan Allen,
losing patience fast. And sister is Christina Ricci, rifling through
everyone's belongings at every opportunity. Close by is a very
predatory Sigourney Weaver. Amidst the chaos, Tobey's character is
lost, and lovestruck too, hooked by rich girl Libbets Casey, played
by Katie Holmes.
It was an intensely miserable movie, but the critics liked its
unswerving vision. Tobey moved on to Woody Allen's Deconstructing
Harry, where Allen played Harry Block, a writer who unashamedly uses
the people in his life and has undergone three unsuccessful
marriages. He's also plagued by visions, Tobey playing one of his
fictional alter-egos, a shoe-salesman.
After an impressive cameo as a hitch-hiker in Terry Gilliam's Fear
and Loathing In Las Vegas, getting involved as Johnny Depp and Del
Toro cross America in a stoned haze, came the intriguing
Pleasantville. Here Tobey played a lonely, repressed guy, constantly
battling with his far more sexually active sister, Reese Witherspoon
(who'd earlier appeared with him in SFW). He likes to lose himself
in the sheer niceness of a Fifties soap opera on TV and, during
another fight with his sister and thanks to a magic remote control,
he literally does it, disappears into the show, along with
Witherspoon. Now living in a black and white world, he discovers
that his super-nice parents in this super-nice town are William H.
Macy and, for the second time, Joan Allen. He loves the pleasantness
here in Pleasantville and, being an expert on the show, already
knows everyone and their history, so he fits in seamlessly.
Witherspoon, on the other hand, wants some REAL fun and, when she
starts getting it, colours begin to spring up, freaking out
EVERYONE.
It was a good movie, well-written and intelligent, as was Maguire's
next effort, John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Here he played
Homer Wells, a young man who's been raised in an orphanage and
taught the rudiments of medicine by Dr Larch (Michael Caine, who won
an Oscar for his pains). Larch is a junkie and secret abortionist,
but a decent fellow who wants Homer to continue his good work.
Homer, on the other hand, wants to see the world and, when Paul Rudd
and Charlize Theron show up for an abortion, he leaves with them to
work on Rudd's apple farm. Then, when Rudd goes off to war, he's
left with the really rather attractive Theron. But is what he was
looking for actually back at the orphanage, where it was all along?
Now came another couple of classy productions. First, there was Ang
Lee again, and Ride With The Devil. Here Maguire and Skeet Ulrich
played Southern fellows in the Civil War who, after Skeet's dad is
killed by Union soldiers, join the Bushwhackers, irregular raiders
on the side of the Confederacy. They skirmish, then hide, and Skeet
falls for pretty widow Jewel who, when Skeet is horribly wounded,
Maguire must escort to a safe house. Then he must raid again, as the
war's cycle of revenge gets ever crazier and his notions of honour
are tested to the max.
And now there was Wonder Boys, a surprise low-budget hit, directed
by Curtis (LA Confidential) Hanson. Here Michael Douglas was a
professor and novelist in Pittsburgh. His wife has left and he's
made the married chancellor of the college (Frances McDormand)
pregnant. And he's being pursued by a young student, Katie Holmes -
Tobey's Ice Storm love. Tobey plays a moody student and compulsive
liar, who's written a novel and stalks around with a gun. Douglas
takes him under his wing but, at a party, Douglas is attacked by the
host's dog and Tobey blows it away - maximum embarrassment is on the
cards. Worse still, the host's dearest possession, a jacket worn by
Marilyn Monroe on her wedding day, has gone missing. Man!
It was a sweet movie, many lauding it as the most realistic college
film in years. Tobey had enjoyed the shoot, spending a lot of time
in Michael Douglas's trailer, shooting the breeze about basketball -
Tobey loves to watch the Lakers. The kudos of everyone involved in
the picture was raised sky-high.
And then there was the big one, Spider-Man. Directed by Sam (Evil
Dead) Raimi, this was to be one of the biggest blockbusters of all
time. Many star-names were bandied about. Freddie Prinze Jr, Heath
Ledger and Tobey's mate Leonardo were suggested to play Peter
Parker, the nerd who gets bitten by a genetically modified spider
and becomes a super-hero. As his arch-enemy, The Green Goblin,
Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich were mentioned. As it turned out,
the Goblin would be Willem Dafoe, love interest Mary Jane Watson
would be Kirsten Dunst and Spidey would be Tobey Maguire. A perfect
choice, though he'd never read the comics. Who else could deliver
that shy grin when he realises his super-powers are for real?
Besides, Maguire had much in common with Peter Parker. "The
responsibilities, the loneliness, the sacrifices. I went through
some of these things in my life", he said and certainly, after the
last couple of years, he understood how life could be utterly
transformed.
As said, Spider-Man was immense, a record breaker. The biggest 3-day
opening ever: the highest one-day total: the fastest film to $100
million: the highest per-screen average ever for a major release.
Tobey was made. He bought himself a $3.5 million pad in Beverly
Hills and was rumoured to be seeing first Dunst, then Nicole Kidman
(turned out this was a smokescreen for a rendezvous with Ben Affleck
- by Kidman, that is, NOT Maguire).
Next, having bought the rights to the book, Maguire had planned to
star in Spike Lee's The 25th Hour, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Ed Norton. But his hectic Spider-Man schedule put paid to that,
Tobey eventually acting only as co-producer. Instead, once
Spider-Man was done, he moved on to Seabiscuit, the tale of a small,
lazy horse who, due to the efforts of a dedicated owner (Jeff
Bridges), visionary trainer (Chris Cooper) and desperate jockey
(Maguire), took on and beat the great War Admiral, thereby boosting
the hopes of all Americans struggling through the Great Depression.
It was another hit, taking $120 million at the US box-office and,
perhaps more importantly, selling 5.5 million DVDs, then a record
for a drama.
It was a strange time for Maguire, a very bumpy ride. That same
year, 2003, he was forced to pay back $197,000 he'd been given by
convicted financial advisor Dana Giachetto (Cameron Diaz and Tim
Roth had to return money too). He also revealed that he'd become a
member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And there were problems with
Spider-Man 2. It was reported that, due to the success of the
original movie, Maguire was holding out for a bigger cheque and had
been replaced by Jake Gyllenhaal. In fact, Tobey had suffered a
herniated disc in his back due to the physical nature of the
Spider-Man and Seabiscuit shoots and wasn't sure he could handle
another like role. However, after working with stunt-crews it was
decided Maguire could see it through and signed up for SM2, still
pining after Kirsten Dunst but this time battling Alfred Molina's
aggressively limbed Dr Octopus. With its SFX far more convincing
than those of SM1, it was another huge success. A second sequel
would be planned for 2007.
Now a teetotal, non-smoking ,vegetarian yoga-fiend, Maguire does
still have one vice to be proud of - gambling. In 2004 he entered
the Commerce Casino's California State Poker Championship
(eventually won by Ben Affleck), but was knocked out in the early
stages. Now that the Spider-Man franchise has made him rich it's a
dead cert that he'll fulfil his main ambition - to excel on stage
and screen, just like his heroes De Niro, Pacino and Hoffman. He's
certainly made a hell of a start.
Dominic Wills |
