Blockbuster Summer: Who Is That Masked Man?

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Now Maguire is being compared to DiCaprio--another serious actor turned teen idol following a big mainstream hit. But though audiences may cling to Maguire as Spider-Man, it's unlikely they'll embrace his quirky persona in standard leading-man roles. He simply isn't as warm as Tom Hanks or as dashing as Tom Cruise. "I just want to make good movies," says Maguire. "If there's a script I like with a character I like and a filmmaker I like, I would do the movie. I'm not really concerned about money. You could say I'm even less so now. I'm a single guy. If I had a family of eight to support, it might be a different story."

There are already signs that Maguire's life and career have changed dramatically. Just days after he showed up on 7,500 screens as Spider-Man, he appeared in the spotlight again--this time on the cover of a tabloid, walking arm in arm with Nicole Kidman. A headline screamed: NICOLE AND SPIDER-MAN RED-HOT ROMANCE! Maguire is a movie star now, and his life has become a spectator sport. He has been romantically linked to a leading lady (Spider-Man's Kirsten Dunst), and now he's a major player in the Kidman-Cruise celebrity-gossip sweepstakes. Of Kidman, he says, "We're friends." Of his radically heightened recognizability, he notes, "It's kind of surreal, because it's pretty drastic. It's a more definitive difference than I expected. I feel like a lot of things changed within a three-day period." And no one knows better than Spider-Man that change is never easy. --Jess Cagle