By BYSEAN DALY Special to the Daily Press
Tobey Maguire is a man of few words. Somewhat shy and soft-spoken, he is, in many ways, very much like Peter Parker, the nerdy high school loner who becomes transformed in to superhero, Spiderman.
But Maguire, 26, would have never noticed the connection until recently.
“I wasn’t a big comic book fan when I was a kid,” he admits over a cup of flavored tea at the posh Four Seasons Hotel. “I don’t think I ever read a complete comic book until I was cast in the film. I’ve since read the first four years worth of Spiderman.”
That’s where Maguire admits he began to see a reflection of himself.
“I really identified with both Peter and Spiderman,” he said. “It’s the whole thing of the kid who is not the most social person in the world, but he gets in the suit and he can feel a different freedom. He can have this sense of confidence and humor and then go back to being like one of us and dealing with money problems, girl problems.”
For Maguire, who remembers being “a bit of an outsider” as a youth, connecting to the character was the easy part. It was getting into physical shape for the role that presented the real challenge.
5B1,“I trained for five months, six days a week, anywhere from an hour and a half to four hours a day,” he revealed. “I was doing a combination of gymnastics, yoga, martial arts, weight training and high end cardio.”
Maguire also stuck to a rigid diet, agreed upon by his personal nutritionist.
In the end, the hard work paid off. When the 5’6” actor removed his shirt in one of the film’s early scenes, audience members at a preview screening in Los Angeles could be heard gasping. “Are those muscles real?”
“Of course they are,” he smiled.
What wasn’t as authentic were some of Maguire’s high-flying stunts.
“If it looks like it’s impossible for a human being to do, then it’s probably computer generated,” the Santa Monica native admits. “And if it looks like it takes the skill of a gymnast, it is probably not me.”
More than three years and $130 million went into adapting comic scribe Stan Lee’s legendary character to the big screen. About $4 million of that went straight to Maguire. But when “Spider-Man” made its much-anticipated debut in theaters Friday, don’t expect Maguire to be nervously keeping tabs on box office numbers.
“I’ll be busy watching the (Los Angeles) Lakers take a third in a row in the NBA Playoffs,” he said.
Maguire already is guaranteed a cool $26 million to appear in two sequels, the first of which is already in development.
“I have knowledge (about the script), so I’m not allowed to talk about it,” he teased.
Maguire, who began his career in TV commercials before landing a spot on the short-lived Fox comedy “Great Scott” reveals there was a time when “(my family) didn’t have a hundred bucks in the bank, but I knew I would be just fine.”
Such confidence helped Maguire, the only child born to Vincent, a cook, and Wendy, a secretary, cope with his parents’ divorce (when he was 2 years old) and constant moving around.
“I’ve probably lived in 50 different homes,” he said. “In ninth grade I was in West LA. Eighth grade was in Hollywood. Sixth and seventh was in Palm Springs. I really became truant and less interested in school. Prior to that, I was a great student and in all honors classes.”
Maguire ended up dropping out altogether during his sophomore year and eventually earned a California high school equivalency degree.
“Actually, I cheated,” he confessed. “I was in home study and it was the kind of home study where they send you all of the answers to every one of the questions. So I completed my whole year in just two days. I copied all the answers.”
No worries — acting seems to suit Maguire just fine. In 2000, he earned rave reviews as a teenage prodigy in “Wonder Boys,” but it was his appearance as orphan Homer Wells in “The Cider House Rules” that confirmed Maguire as Hollywood’s next big thing. Not bad for a guy who originally wanted to be a chef, but turned to acting when his mother convinced him to take drama class instead of Home Economics.
A vegetarian, who enjoys both yoga and cooking, Maguire takes a giant step into romantic leading man status in “Spiderman.” One of the film’s most talked-about scenes features the actor hanging upside down in his red and blue superhero outfit, as he shares a passionate kiss with love-interest Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst).
“It was awful,” Dunst remembers. “It was freezing cold and raining. The blood was rushing to his head and he could barely breathe, so kissing him was kind of like giving C.P.R.”
Whether Maguire has been getting a more romantic version of that kiss off-screen remains something of a mystery. Both actors have spent the past year telling the world, “We’re just friends.” But photographs of a private moment at a recent Los Angeles Lakers basketball game and sightings of the couple shopping in a Sunset Boulevard bookshop and dining at the trendy Ivy Restaurant in Beverly Hills continue to fuel the rumor mill.
“He’s had crushes on many women,” Dunst revealed, coyly. “I’m just one of a dozen. They have linked him with other girls now, so he seems like a slut, in a way.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 4, 2002. Read the original PDF.