Tobey Grows Up

In the mirror, Tobey Maguire almost looks like a regular person. It's 8 a.m., and he's sprawled out in a makeup chair on the closed set of Spider-Man II, wearing gray sweats, shorts and sneakers. He's not exactly larger than life--maybe 5 ft. 8 in. His hair is goofy and tousled. His voice is hoarse and has a touch of Californian dude-ulosity in it. But the chair swivels around, and you notice the eyes, luminous pearly gray lasers that go right through you. Then you remember: Oh, yeah. Right. Movie star.

It was Ernest Hemingway who first described the subspecies of movie star that Maguire belongs to, calling them "the great American boy-men." They're the ageless, fresh-faced whippets of the silver screen--slim of build, dazzling of smile, androgynous of gender. Leonardo DiCaprio used to be one; Elijah Wood is still one. Now Tobey Maguire is breaking ranks. In his new movie, Seabiscuit, he grows up.

Thus far Maguire has made a career out of playing dreamy-eyed kids. He was a desperate adolescent in The Ice Storm, an undergraduate wunderkind in Wonder Boys, an innocent Candide in The Cider House Rules, and lest we forget, a secretive high school super-nerd in last year's blockbuster Spider-Man. But don't confuse him with any of those losers in real life. Offscreen, Maguire is as tough as nails, managing his resume as well as any other star in Hollywood. Look at the arc of his career. It's as perfect as the part in Peter Parker's hair. At 28, he has worked for a string of A-list directors that would make James Lipton weep, including Woody Allen, Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam and Curtis Hanson. How does he do it? Where's his Weekend at Bernie's? "I wait," says Maguire. "I don't want to work as an actor just because I haven't worked in six months. I want to only do things when I really want to do them, and if they only come along every year, year and a half, then that's fine."

Maybe Maguire is a control freak because he never had much control over things as a kid. His parents were 18 and 20 when they had him, and split up two years later. Dad was a cook; Mom was a secretary. Maguire grew up ping-ponging between them, moving from state to state. Often he was so nervous he threw up in the morning before school. Then everything changed. He was in junior high, and his mom wanted him to take a drama class. She bribed him with $100. After that, it was commercials--his first onscreen performance was in an Atari ad--and TV shows like Blossom and Walker, Texas Ranger, then movies. His last year of formal schooling was ninth grade.

Maguire exercises the same kind of control over his personal life. He doesn't drink--in fact, he has been in Alcoholics Anonymous since he was 19. He doesn't eat meat. He's all about boundaries. Last year Autograph Collectors magazine ranked him No. 4 on its list of the world's worst autograph signers. Maguire has exactly one vice, illegal Cuban Cohiba Robusto cigars. On this morning, he smokes two before noon. In a three-hour interview, he makes exactly one joke. Asked if he is worried about the cigars messing up his million-dollar voice, he pretends to be offended. "A million?" he says, as if that's not enough. (Fact is, he's reportedly getting $12 million for Seabiscuit and $17 million for Spider-Man II.)