Back in action

LOS ANGELES -- Tobey Maguire is bored with his own back story. Not the part about his unwed but hardworking teenage parents, nor the decision to drop out of school in ninth grade to pursue acting. He means his actual back, which has ached for years and spawned more rumors than he cares to rebut. For the record, all that horseback riding in "Seabiscuit" did take its toll. He did feel obligated to disclose his condition to the company insuring "Spider-Man 2." After all, despite the emphasis on Peter Parker's love for Mary Jane Watson, the script called for even more wall-climbing, back-flipping, ground-slamming stunts than the original. But Maguire says he never feared paralysis or considered turning down the multimillion-dollar payday. Now he's worried that's all anyone wants to hear about.

"The topics that interest me have nothing to do with my own celebrity or whether I relate to Peter Parker or what happened with my back or these kind of things," Maguire said. "What interests me is: What is existence? Who are we as people? What are we here to do individually, and collectively who are we? I like to hear what people have to say about that sort of thing."

Maguire, as it turns

out, is every bit as introspective in person as Spider-Man's teenage alter ego is on-screen this time around. Sometime-party-boy image aside -- and he does run with a group of Hollywood he-hotties -- Maguire says he prefers the spiritual to the superficial. He's interested in all facets of faith. At one point he even prayed regularly in his own way, in the evenings with gratitude for all he had and in the mornings for all he wanted, more often, he says, to be a more loving person rather than an even richer one. As he approaches his 29th birthday, Maguire is rich, all right. After a steadily impressive career that often called for him to blink those blue eyes hard ("The Ice Storm," "Pleasantville," "The Cider House Rules," and "Wonder Boys"), he transformed himself into an action figure, albeit one whose story has historically emphasized the human over the superhuman. The special diet, the hours of pushing weights in the gym, paid off: "Spider-Man" went on to gross more than $820 million worldwide. Maguire's performance silenced the critics -- and comic-book geeks can be some of the harshest. It also helped him more than quadruple his salary to a reported $17 million for the sequel.

As Kirsten Dunst, whose real-life beau, Jake Gyllenhaal, was being considered to play Peter Parker to her Mary Jane Watson if Maguire's back didn't hold, put it, "He's my boyfriend, but . . . Tobey is Spider-Man. It wouldn't have been as good without him. . . . He's an every kind of man in this movie. He's relatable."

Maguire himself appears to relate best to Spidey's save-the-world side. After a testy encounter with a soundstage full of journalists, where he scoffed at what he considered the simplicity or stupidity of some questions, Maguire sat down for a longer chat, saying he preferred organic conversations to predetermined ones. Forgoing talk of blue-and-red spandex (the undergarment does ride up in the crotch, but, no, the outfit doesn't itch), he speaks instead of giving back some of the good fortune that bought him a $3.7 million, 5,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills. He can afford his vices now, too. A keen card shark, Maguire paid $10,000 to play the opening hand of the World Series of Poker Championship in Las Vegas last month. He was knocked out in the first round.

But entering a tournament, regardless of how expensive, is easier than deciding where to focus his charitable efforts and how -- making behind-the-scenes donations or lending his recognizable face to some worthy cause.

Sitting straight on a couch, in shirttails and days-old stubble, Maguire said, "It's a little bit confusing to me. Education for kids is important -- not just books but how to live, how to make choices, how to listen to your own intuition, both to really lock into it and get a sense of what path to choose. How to unlock barriers, not stifle yourself, and imagine anything that you can achieve and do anything."

Maguire manages to say that mouthful without sounding silly, not always easy in a Hollywood that tends toward the touchy-feely pronouncement. Long interested in spiritual and philosophical texts ("That's what interested me as a teenager; I've read nothing but scripts since," he said with a laugh), Maguire has of course attended a few meetings to learn more about the kabbalah teachings now associated as much with Madonna as with Jewish tradition. But Maguire says he isn't seeking faith in anything organized as much as he is hoping to understand faith itself.

"Forget about what people believe in terms of the physical world -- I'm talking about concept or the principle of faith," Maguire said. "To operate on faith in some sort of higher power than the human intellect, what does that give you? It gives you a direct line or a communication to God. What is God? It's this high power. How do you communicate with it? I think it's some kind of internal process where you're listening to your own intuition."

Maguire the movie star believes in harnessing the universe to manifest his desires, which has worked well for him so far. He says he visualized the house he wanted and imagined he had already found it. He's done the same with movie roles and nonmaterial needs. He says he's read -- and that he'd like to read more -- about how "the universe helps in mysterious ways" when one commits himself in advance.

And, once his concerns about his sore back were resolved, commit himself he did to Sam Raimi's vision for "Spider-Man 2," letting the director smash him into wall after wall, hitting the ground so hard for a scene that even Spider-Man complains, "My back, my back." But it was Maguire's ability to make Peter Parker's dilemma -- save strangers or save himself for love -- real that mattered most to Raimi. For him, Spider-Man's story has always been about a boy trying to do his best and not always succeeding.

"Tobey has the ability to be a very real person on-screen," Raimi said. "He's a good person, simple, doesn't put on a lot of airs. He doesn't pretend on-screen, he just is."

Well, sort of. Just being on-screen for the two "Spider-Man" movies required intensive training, unlike anything Maguire had undergone before. Nothing spiritual about it, except perhaps the yoga Maguire has practiced off and on for almost a decade. At the same time, he had to regain the 20-plus pounds he had lost to play a jockey in "Seabiscuit." Then he had to resculpt himself into something other superheroes wouldn't sneer at. The training was tedious, the results impossible to ignore.

The first "Spider-Man" was "the first time I'd ever been in shape like that, and it was crazy, I was obsessed," said Maguire, who hasn't kept up the body since filming ending, although he has hardly gone squishy just yet. "I just wanted to prove it to myself and to other people. . . . I was like, `Grrrrr." I was just hungry to work hard. . . . I was in sick shape, ripped up, cut up, body fat was like zero."

Maguire, whose clothes tend toward the baggy and who doesn't have a section of his closet set aside for his Spider-Man-sized body, amazed even himself. He admitted: "I looked in the mirror more than usual, I did do that." The physical transformation was less awe-inspiring the second time. He expects his third round as Spider-Man, with Raimi at the helm again and Dunst at his side, to barely merit a mention of his muscles.

That's fine with Maguire, who has little formal schooling and dreams of time off that would allow him to mix vacation and study. But he's been working as long as he can remember, first in commercials, then in TV, now most famously in movies. The son of a cook father and secretary mother who did marry and then divorce, he says he has the work ethic in him, although he can imagine going in other directions while also continuing to act. He just has to meditate on what they might be.

Lynda Gorov can be reached at lgorov@aol.com.