Celebrity Biographies
Toby Maguire
Looking like an outstanding student, clueless, shy and smiling, he rose to the top of popularity dressed in the spider-man suit. But despite his youth, Tobey Maguire has spent a decade trapping the public with his networks in memorable performances, with Ang Lee, Curtis Hanson or Woody Allen.
Born on June 27, 1975, in Santa Monica (California), Tobias Vincent Maguire was the first child of an 18-year-old cook and a 20-year-old worker. The couple separated when Tobey was one year old, and the child was He stayed with his mother, who in search of work traveled to various locations in the western United States. The boy was going to be a chef, but Arguiñano lost a possible competitor when her mother offered him a hundred dollars to give up cooking classes and enroll in acting, since she herself had dreamed of being an actress in her youth. In addition, he accompanied him to many castings, and at a very young age he was selected for several television commercials. At the age of 17, she was given the lead role in the sitcom Great Scott , but it was unsuccessful, and was promptly withdrawn from the schedule.
Rather than get discouraged, the boy kept going err and err until he was cast as a co-star with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, in Life of This Boy , even though his role was very minor. He had more room in Woody Allen ‘s Taking Harry Down , as a young man who turns to a prostitute, and especially as the student who meets his parents in Taiwanese Ang Lee ‘s The Ice Storm . For this last work he received good reviews, for which he was offered his first leading role, in the fantasy Pleasantville , where he was a young man mysteriously trapped in a sitcom. After a small role in the iconoclasticFear and Loathing in Las Vegas , made popular by The Cider House Rules . Perhaps the quality of the interpreters was the most interesting thing about this adaptation of a John Irving novel , with pro-abortion purposes. Notable were the veteran Michael Caine , as Dr. Willbur Larc, and the young Maguire, as Homer Wells, his apprentice. Although he repeated with Ang Lee in Ride with the Devil , this title was the one that went most unnoticed on the billboards of the prolific filmmaker. Greater recognition reached the magnificent Prodigious Youngsters , where he was a student of privileged literary talent.
And from there he went on to stardom, when Sam Reimi chose him among dozens of applicants to play Peter Parker in Spider-Man . It was not an easy role, as he had to undergo intense training to gain muscle volume. At one point during the shoot he suffered a claustrophobic attack, for which the director had to call a hypnotist to calm him down.
From superhero to jockey in Seabiscuit , the true story of a horse that was all the rage at racetracks in America during the Great Depression. He has received such great reviews that he might even drop an Oscar nomination.
Embracing success at a young age is not an easy task, and Maguire had some problems with alcohol. He even nearly lost his role in the Spider-Man sequel, during a crisis stage, probably fueled by drink. Luckily, he realized right away that he was heading towards his own destruction, and after publicly confessing his addiction, he set to work to regenerate himself.