Tobey Maguire Had a Hard Time Escaping Poverty and Father’s Criminal Past Before Getting Spider-Man Fame
Tobey Maguire is one of the most successful actors from the 2000s. The actor was the first to play Marvel’s beloved superhero Spider-Man. Playing Peter Parker in a time when technology wasn’t as developed, Maguire showed that not only can it be done but it can be done well.
Bringing the comic-book hero to life brought Maguire immense success. He was launched into global stardom and became a millionaire. However, this success of his was not achieved overnight. Maguire’s journey to the top is quite literally from rags to riches.
Tobey Maguire’s Troubled Childhood
Hollywood is a place of wonders and scandals alike. And the subject of nepotism in the entertainment industry sporadically becomes a hot topic. Seldom, does some star emerge who does with no connections, and makes it on their own.
Tobey Maguire is also one of the special ones. He is someone who made a path for himself with his talent and determination. But the actor never had it easy.
Born in 1975, to Vincent Maguire and Wendy Brown, Tobias Vincent Maguire harbored the dream of becoming a chef, like his father. It was less the passion for cooking and more of a desire to change the economic condition of his family. Maguire’s parents were fairly young when they had him. With his mother still a teenager and his father barely in his twenties, they were struggling to make ends meet.
Things were bad enough for Maguire’s father to rob a bank. As the story was revealed by National Enquirer (via YourTango) in 2012, due to some terrifying health conditions and seeing his income as a chef inadequate for his family, the Seabiscuit star’s dad robbed a bank.
In 1993, Vincent Maguire lost his sister to cancer and had the responsibility to provide for her children. Moreover, he himself was diagnosed with polyps, which he believed to be cancerous. The story of Maguire’s father robbing a bank isn’t a thrilling heist. Rather it is a poor man desperate to take care of his family. He got caught, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to two years of imprisonment.
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Tobey Maguire’s Equation with Money
The instance with his father and the general circumstances he was brought up in, Toby Maguire was driven to be financially secure in his life. Speaking about the troubles of his younger years, The Great Gatsby star told The Guardian:
“I always had a roof over my head, but I slept on the couches of relatives, and some nights we wandered around a shelter. My family had food stamps and government health insurance. I wanted to get out of that, so my ambition initially was to earn money.”
But when you come from a lack of resources, even if you end up having plenty of them, the cautiousness of poverty never leaves you. Maguire did get a lot of money but he wasn’t exactly comfortable in using it. As he told Parade magazine (via People):
“When I first became successful, I was very conservative with my money. That definitely stems from my background. You know those lottery winners who win big and then spend all the money? That wouldn’t happen to me. I never wanted to be in the position where my expenses were so big that I had to keep making movie after movie.”
Seeing his mother, an aspiring actress struggle to earn, Maguire was set on following his father’s footsteps of being a chef. He was later bribed into doing acting classes by his mother; which certainly paid off.
Source: The Guardian, People and YourTango
