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TOBEY MAGUIRE OPENS UP ABOUT TOUGH CHILDHOOD; SAYS KISSING
KIRSTEN DUNST WAS HARDEST THING HE HAD TO DO AS SPIDER-MAN
When you’re tracking down Spider-Man—a.k.a. Tobey Maguire—you expect
a little intrigue. In his office just above Sunset Boulevard,
Maguire has no sign on the door—only an intercom button. Press it,
and you are buzzed into the hushed lair of the 31-year-old actor who
has laid claim to what is arguably the richest superhero role in
Hollywood history.
Just don’t expect a superhero entrance.
“Hi,” he says, shuffling into the conference room with an armful of
cobalt-blue water bottles. “ Want one of these?” (In Hollywood, the
offering of bottled water is a ritual akin to passing the Native
American peace pipe.) In person, Maguire is slight—maybe 5 feet 8 or
so—and with his thick mop of neat brown hair, he will probably
always remind you of a kid who has just been to the barbershop. The
white sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers do nothing to offset that
impression. But talking to him does.
Just back from a photo shoot—where he was, of course, shrouded in
cobwebs—he is wryly amused and accepting of his fate. “Yeah, I do
get a lot of spidery stuff in my life,” he admits in his very
distinctive voice—high and scratchy, like an old record. The
conference room, adorned with Spider-Man snow globes, lunch pails
and cereal boxes, makes the point. “It’s probably going to get
insane again now,” he says, laughing about the imminent May 4
opening of Spider-Man 3.
Not that Maguire, who reportedly earned about $17 million for this
latest installment, is complaining. He has worn the spandex well.
And barring the occasional bump in the road—a testy contract
renegotiation before undertaking Spider-Man 2—he has taken his lumps
as Peter Parker, the high school nerd who contracts miraculous
powers from the bite of a bioengineered spider, with consummate
grace. Despite all the acrobatics, he says, “Probably the hardest
thing I’v e had to do as Spider-Man was kiss Kirsten Dunst.” Come
again? Maguire laughs and hurries to explain himself:
“When we shot that scene where we kissed in the alleyway and I was
hanging upside down, it was really late at night, it was raining,
and the whole time I had rainwater running up my nose. Then, when
Kirsten rolled back the wet mask, she cut off the air completely.”
(OK, I get it, but I’m not shedding any tears for him.)
Still, life for Maguire hasn’t all been kissing Kirsten Dunst. When
he was born in Santa Monica, Calif., his mother was only 18 and his
father, a cook, was 20. By the time Tobey was 3, they’d separated
for good. As a result, Tobey bounced around from one relative’s home
to another throughout his childhood, from Southern California to
Oregon to Washington.
“They were just babies,” he says of his young parents, “doing
whatever the heck they thought they should be doing.” Maguire says
it with great compassion, the way a dad might explain away his own
kids’ misbehavior. “But I always felt that there were people in my
life who cared about me—that I was special to them. It’s very
complicated. But the truth of the matter is, I realized at a young
age that I was responsible for myself. My feelings of love or
security or happiness—they were all in my own hands. I had plenty of
difficult emotional and scary times as a kid, but I don’t dwell on
it.” And then he adds with great conviction, “I am not a victim.”
Indeed, Maguire gives off a surprisingly businesslike, though always
affable, vibe: Despite all the roles he has played as lost and
forlorn young men in everything from The Ice Storm and Wonder Boys
to The Cider House Rules, he comes across in person as thoughtful,
deliberate and downright driven. “If there’s one thing I know,” he
says, “it’s that I don’t want to play any more wide-eyed high school
kids who are awkward with girls!
“Growing up the way I did, I had a very serious ambition to make
some money, to have some security and comfort in my life,” he adds.
And $100 was all it took to set him on his way. When he was 11,
Tobey was planning to enroll in a cooking class at school. Instead,
his mother, who’d had some showbiz dreams of her own, offered him
$100 to try acting classes. “It was the best money she ever spent,”
he says. Soon Tobey started auditioning for everything from TV
sitcoms to movies, and he began landing parts pretty much from the
get-go.
“When I first started being successful at this, financially
speaking, I was very conservative with my money. That was definitely
a product of where I came from. You know those Lotto winners who win
big and then blow through all the money? That would never happen to
me. I just never wanted to put myself in the position where my
spending was so huge that I had to keep making movie after movie. My
mentality about that has changed a bit,” he concedes, now that he’s
a bona fide superstar.
Besides, Maguire now has a family to plan for. He’s engaged to
Jennifer Meyer, an L.A. jewelry designer who also happens to be the
daughter of Ron Meyer, the president of Universal Studios, and
together they have a 5-month-old daughter, Ruby. “L.A. is my home,
and I have a lot of friends here,” Maguire says, “but I’m at that
stage where I have to start thinking about where I want Ruby to grow
up and go to school. And even though L.A. is pretty laid-back, maybe
it would be a good idea to try a different, less ambitious kind of
atmosphere.”
For a guy who dropped out of school after 10th grade, Maguire exudes
a sophistication and maturity far beyond his years and his looks.
Whatever he takes on, he takes on for real. An ardent vegetarian for
14 years, he even has forsworn a leather interior in his new car (“I
ordered it with canvas”) and also is starting to wear shoes “made
from hemp and things like that.”
Not to make too much of it, but it’s worth noting that the name of
his most famous character is Spider-Man, not Spider-Boy. Those
pale-blue eyes look like they’ve seen a lot, and when he says, “I
feel like you could drop me anywhere in the world, anonymously, and
I’d figure out how to survive,” you believe him. “If you stripped
away everything I’ve got—the money, the fame, the possessions,
everything—I know that I’d find a way to get along,” Maguire
declares in a confident but not boastful way, “because, basically,
that’s what I’ve had to do all my life.”
OTHER
QUOTES AND COMMENTS FROM THE PARADE INTERVIEW
The vegetarian…
“I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years now,” Maguire tells us. “And a
lot of the time I avoid going to restaurants. I eat at home.
Actually, I’m close to being a vegan, but I’m not one, technically.
I don’t eat eggs, or nearly any dairy—no cheese or milk. I do eat
honey, and a piece of milk chocolate here and there…. It’s never
really been that hard for me. I’ve never had any desire to eat meat.
In fact, when I was a kid I would have a really difficult time
eating meat at all. It had to be the perfect bite, with no fat or
gristle or bone or anything like that…. I don’t judge people who eat
meat—that’s not for me to say—but the whole thing just sort of bums
me out.”
The gambler…
“I play some poker, and I really enjoy it. At the casinos I don’t
really play the other games very much because unless you’ve got a
team of MIT graduates working with you, it’s difficult to win at the
blackjack table. And you can’t get away with that for very long. But
the thing about poker is, first of all there’s the social
element—it’s fun—and it’s a game of skill, where you can tip the
scales in your favor. I don’t like to play games where the odds are
against me.”
The art collector…
“I’m an art lover. I love going to galleries and museums like LACMA
[Los Angeles County Museum of Art]. What’s wild is that when I go to
New York, I’ll go to see everything, but something will be [in L.A.]
for four months and I still don’t get around to it. Although I
probably look at more art when I’m in New York, I do like going to
see art here, or even at someone’s house. Sometimes I’ll go and
visit artists in their studios just to check out their work.”
Jaaaack…
“I can’t really say that I’d model my career on anyone else’s, but I
admire the guys from the ’70s—Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Dustin
Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall. Nicholson, probably more than
any other actor, has sustained the highest level for the longest
time—getting the best roles, working with the best directors. If I
could have anything like those opportunities for the next 30 years
of my own career, that would be great!”
Writer Robert Masello on Maguire…
“The thing about Tobey is, he kind of sneaks up on you—in life, just
as he does in the movies. When you first encounter him—on screen or
in person—he seems slight, soft-spoken, even a bit insubstantial.
But as time goes by, he gathers weight and gains your attention and
ultimately you find that you’re totally focused on him. In a movie,
you’ve become utterly convinced that he is the character—whether
it’s Spider-Man or Red Pollard, the jockey in Seabiscuit—and it’s as
if he’s pulled off a very smooth magic trick. Offscreen, you find
that you’re really listening to what he has to say and that you’re
fully engaged. Could this be charisma?”
SLIDESHOW AVAILABLE HERE AT PARADE.COM
© Robert Masello, Parade Magazine |
