Tobey Maguire’s impetuous behaviour nearly cost him his job and a $17-million pay cheque in the sequel to Spider-Man — and he knows it. The contrite 27-year-old actor is again playing Peter Parker/Spider-Man, but he got the role back only through the intervention of his girlfriend’s father — who heads Universal Studios — and a heartfelt apology.
Maguire’s mounting personal problems erupted in March when he was suffering from intense back pain emanating from a herniated disc. Over the years, the scrawny actor has suffered spinal spasms that were aggravated by playing a jockey in Seabiscuit. Anticipating the intensive training — including gymnastics, martial arts and power yoga — necessary to reprise his Spider-Man role, Maguire didn’t want to begin work on the strenuous, web-slinging sequel as scheduled earlier this year. “I was getting frustrated out of pain,” he explains.
Presumably on the advice of his agent, Maguire assumed: “They’re going to have to make some accommodation for me.” But the wheels for making Spider-Man II were already in motion and Maguire never took the time to personally communicate with producer Laura Ziskin, director Sam Raimi or Columbia Studios president Amy Pascal.
Instead, he dispatched his neurosurgeon, Dr Ian Armstrong, to Columbia Studios to examine what would be required of Maguire in each scene on the shooting schedule in order to evaluate whether the physical action required would be detrimental to his patient’s health.
With millions of dollars in the balance, the worried executive team at Columbia Studios met and made an uncomfortable decision. They informed Maguire that he was being dropped from the sequel and announced that the release date was to be changed from May 2004 to July 2004. Maguire was stunned, particularly when — almost immediately — there were rampant rumours that co-star Kirsten Dunst’s off-screen boyfriend, actor Jake Gyllenhaal, was being considered as his replacement. Like Maguire, Gyllenhaal exudes a slight, youthful appearance and recently earned praise as Jennifer Aniston’s lover in The Good Girl.
“A lot of this problem comes from me not having gone to them personally and trying to resolve it,” Maguire admits. “I never understood that we were at that point. There was a period where I didn’t know what I could do to work it out. I felt a little bit at a loss.”
Fortunately, he confided his concern to his girlfriend, Jennifer Meyer, whose father is Ron Meyer, who heads Universal Studios, for whom Maguire had made Seabiscuit. Inevitably, a meeting occurred at which the experienced motion picture executive explained — in no uncertain terms — the consequences of Maguire’s blunder. No doubt he alluded to how both Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer had jeopardised their careers when they refused to reprise Batman and how Alec Baldwin’s outrageous demands had cost him the recurring role of Jack Ryan in the Tom Clancy action-adventures. There’s a long tradition of smart, experienced actors who make bad career moves but when less established stars are involved in self-indulgent debacles, it can be crippling.
Basically, Meyer spoke to Maguire like a father — perhaps becoming the strong paternal influence that Maguire never had. “My mom was an 18-year-old secretary and my dad was a 20-year-old chef when I was born,” Maguire has confided in the past. “They got married later but only stayed married for, like, nine months. I spent my childhood bouncing among parents, grandparents and other relatives. I think we were on welfare for a while.”
Years later, it was revealed that Maguire’s father, Vincent, who once worked as a construction worker building Disneyland, is a convicted bank robber who was jailed for two years after he was caught only hours after robbing a bank in his hometown of Reseda, California, back in 1993.
“I feel like I learned a lesson. The movie is the most important thing,” Maguire declares now. “I’ve read spiritual books. There was a concept in The Celestine Prophecy that there are no accidents. A lot of people can’t handle being successful. They don’t think they’re worth it, so they make themselves not worth it and they fuck up. That’s what I did.”
Immediately contrite, he tried to make amends. He asked for and got meetings with Laura Ziskin, Sam Raimi and Amy Pascal — and apologised. “I’m glad I got to look these people in the face and say, ‘I’m really sorry. I’m going to do whatever it takes’,” he told a writer for The Los Angeles Times. Then he agreed to undergo a series of physical tests, including swinging from a harness with the stunt coordinator to prove that he could meet the demanding requirements. Still wary, however, Columbia Studios allegedly insisted that a clause be inserted into his contract that holds him financially responsible if he fails to fulfil his obligations.
In Hollywood, alarm bells go off when a promising young star begins to destroy that promise by making a catastrophic decision. There’s also a long-established tradition of blaming an embarrassing mistake on someone else, so no one in Tinseltown was surprised when Maguire then unceremoniously dumped his long-time agent Leslie Siebert, claiming: “It’s just a business decision, and she’s not the scapegoat. It’s a real bummer for both of us.”
Significantly, Maguire subsequently signed with Richard Lovett (who represents Tom Hanks) and Rick Nicita (who represents Tom Cruise) at CAA, the agency that Meyer had co-founded.
According to those who worked with him on Seabiscuit, Maguire took his role very seriously. In this Depression-era story, he plays Red Pollard, a half-blind ex-prizefighter, who teams up with a mustang breaker (Chris Cooper) and millionaire (Jeff Bridges) to train and take an undersized racehorse named Seabiscuit to fame and fortune.
To prepare himself to play a jockey, he took riding lessons at Sunset Ranch Hollywood Stables, where he suffered a number of falls. Then there was the unfortunate incident when Maguire became acutely ill — in public.
Just after Seabiscuit began filming last October, Maguire was caught by a tabloid photographer jumping out of his silver Mercedes-Benz and vomiting all over the sidewalk. According to observers, just moments before, he had left his optician’s office carrying contact lens solution, a bottle of water, a mobile phone and sunglasses. Then he got into his car, drove about 90m, and fell ill. A bystander said, “Tobey just looked awful. He was white as a ghost, had several days of stubble on his face, and his hair was unkempt. He even sort of limped as he walked. Afterward, he used his T-shirt to wipe his mouth and chin, and then he staggered back to his car. Once inside, he dropped his head on his arms and rested on the wheel.”
Obviously, Maguire is a very troubled soul. Or, as Michael Douglas puts it: “There is a mystery about Tobey as a person — which is very effective as an actor.”
Born on June 27 1975, Tobias Vincent Maguire endured a tough childhood. “I wouldn’t say I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. I had food to eat and a roof over my head,” he says. But “there was a moment when we were really poor and I spent a night in a shelter.” As a youngster, he lived in Oregon, Washington and a half-dozen places around southern California. Constantly relocating and meeting new people generated so much anxiety, he has said, that he would vomit in the mornings before school.
From the very beginning, though, Maguire had a quiet self-confidence: “My mother basically encouraged me to get into acting. She gave me $100 to take an acting workshop. She wanted me to get the chance because she didn’t. I got some TV spots and an ad for Doritos. It’s just a strange thing to start your career at 13. I’ve definitely had another form of education. I’m pretty good at figuring stuff out in my head mathematically, but I don’t really know how to write a letter properly.”
Maguire , who never finished high school, became close friends with Leonardo DiCaprio after they made This Boy’s Life (1993). Together, they have indulged in the nightclub- roaming, fast-lane life — but Maguire began to build an unsavoury reputation for his temperamental explosions. In fact, he fell apart emotionally during the making of Empire Records in 1995, suffering what he refers to as “a semi-breakdown”.
‘He can be drastically funny, outspoken and sarcastic — and his EQ [emotional quotient] is high,” said Lasse Hallstrom, who directed him in The Cider House Rules. During the shooting of that film, Maguire deliberately antagonised his co-star Charlize Theron. “I know I was being a pain in the ass,” he shrugs. “It was my bad [side], and I told her that. We had a rough patch but we worked it out.
“I think I had in my personality, somehow, ways of dealing with people, or relating to people that I didn’t appreciate, that didn’t make me feel good about myself. I would get in people’s faces. I would make people laugh by cutting others down. I wasn’t trying to be nasty to that person, but I was definitely trying to earn points with others. I have a dry sense of humour — and I sometimes take it too far to the point where people don’t know if I’m joking or not. My friends know me. They know that I like to push the envelope in that sense.”
“I want to be liked. I want to have a presence in the room. It’s hard not to be self-protective, though. Vulnerability has its risks — and being hurt. Opening myself up is a tough thing to do. It’s tough to be honest and to let people see you for who you are. I think that’s a risk in itself. And it’s a frightening thing. So, as a result, I do tend to isolate within myself.”
Which is why Maguire’s career flourished by playing pensive, introspective anti-heroes in movies such as The Ice Storm, The Wonder Boys and The Cider House Rules. Certainly, becoming a superhero was not something he dreamed about. “To be honest, I never read a comic book in my entire life before I was cast in Spider-Man,” he says. “I never would have had a chance for the role unless the director, Sam Raimi, wanted me. They were originally considering Jude Law, Chris O’Donnell and Freddie Prinze Jnr.”
But Maguire loved the Spider-Man character — the hapless kid from Queens who discovers extraordinary spider-like abilities after being bitten by a genetically altered arachnid — so much that he was willing to do a screen test, a filmed audition that is often considered an insult to an actor who has garnered a number of respectable credits. He even agreed to do one in a bodysuit.
“I was a little agitated at that point,” he remembers, “but then I realised that the only obstacle was ego — and that wasn’t a good enough reason.” At that time, however, Columbia Pictures made sure to lock him into two Spider Man sequels. “I really didn’t want to do it,” he recalls, “but, basically, they weren’t going to hire me otherwise.
“I’m extremely picky about the movies I make because it’s a big commitment. And I don’t need the money, and it’s not worth it to bust my ass unless it’s something I love. I find I do better with something I’m excited about. It’s like if you’re dating somebody new — and you can’t wait to go to sleep so you can wake up and experience another day with them. When I work, I want to have that kind of feeling — where I’m juiced up to get in there.
“I don’t draw a line between art-house and commercial. It’s good versus bad,” he goes on. “I loved The Sixth Sense, for example. It was a great popcorn movie and executed so well. And the twists got me. My mind was blown, twisted up. I like really strong endings. I liked Memento a lot — and The Pledge. I’d like to do a really funny comedy with some depth but still a broad comedy.”
Over the years, Maguire has learned to take care of himself. When drinking became a teenage problem, he tackled it. “I just didn’t have the tolerance for the effects it had on me,” he says, adding that he has been sober since he was 19. “I didn’t want to induce false states. I wanted to do things for real. I didn’t want to have a drink to take a load off or talk to a girl.”
He won’t smoke, not even for a movie, bragging, “I’ve been off for a few years now.”
He tries not to drink coffee and makes sure he eats properly. To that end, he’s hired his own cook, Eric LeChasseur, who was a former personal chef to Madonna. “I’m a vegetarian,” he says. “I remember the last time I ate meat: it was in Texas, a bacon cheeseburger. The smell of the bacon put me over the edge. It was one of those places where you could imagine them slaughtering the pig out back — and I couldn’t help thinking about the connection between the animal and the food, and that was it.”
He has bought himself his first house, a lavish Hollywood Hills home that cost $3,7-million. The gated, one-storey property, which has three bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms, also has a gym, an infinity pool and a spa. “It’s like modern, comfortable modern,” he says. “It’s a space that I’ve created that feels good.”
And he can view his parents with some maturity: “I think they did a pretty good job for their age and what they had to work with. I get along with both of them now and visit when I can.”
Coming up after Spider-Man II, Maguire will produce a big-screen adaptation of the Len Williams novel, Justice Deferred. Set in the swamps of southern Alabama, it’s the story of Billy Bay Billings, who has been wrongly convicted under the United States’s three-strikes law, giving prisoners no chance of parole. While incarcerated, he studies law, then escapes, changes his name, and becomes a lawyer himself, intent on punishing corrupt policemen like the ones who framed him.
“I want to be around until I’m 80 years old,” Maguire concludes. “I want to always work with the best directors, actors and scripts. The bottom line is: these opportunities have been given to me. They were my fucking dreams and I’m not going to fuck it up. Fear of failure has always been my worst nightmare.” — Profiles International Media