Tobey Maguire: I was born in L.A. Growing up, I bounced around a lot -- Palm Springs, Ashland [Ore.]; Vancouver; Washington State. My mother was eighteen and my father was twenty when they had me. They got married when I was two, and I think they got divorced when I was two as well, so they would move around separately. My father already had a kid from when he was seventeen. I'm twenty-three now and he had two kids at that point. I can't even imagine that.

IS: How many siblings do you have?

TM: I have four half brothers. But I grew up as an only child, pretty much.

IS: Which of your parents raised you, or did they both raise you?

TM: I've lived with my mom by herself, my mom and her boyfriend, my aunt, my grandma. I've lived with my dad alone, my dad and a stepmother, my dad and his brother, my dad and his mom.

IS: How did your mother support you both when you lived with her?

TM: She worked a lot of different jobs. Office work, mostly. Looking back, if anything was her career, it was her children. That's what she's given her life to and it's a big burden. Part of me is grateful and part of me is resentful because I want to see her have her own life. On the other hand, what's wrong with someone's passion being their children?

IS: Were you poor while you were growing up?

TM: We were super-duper poor.

IS: Did you feel that your mother worried about not being able to get you things?

TM: I needed braces when I was a kid but they were too expensive. My mom would still get me these crazy gifts, though. On Christmas or my birthday she would get me something completely beyond our means. She got me a keyboard piano one year, a nice one, even though she couldn't afford it.

IS: It sounds like your mother wanted you to have creative dreams, and maybe try to achieve them.

TM: I don't know what her plan was for me then, but she wanted me to have a taste of things that maybe she wanted to do and never got to. She was always getting me into things like break dancing. When I was eight we'd go to this Saturday market in Portland [Ore.], where me and this other kid would do backspins and little routines and put out our hats and get money. I also took piano and ballet lessons, though I never followed through with anything for too long.

IS: When did acting start to become a big part of your life?

TM: When I was eleven and I was living with my uncle and my father in Palm Springs, I had an elective class. My father's a cook and my grandmother taught culinary arts and I love cooking, so I was going to take home economics. But my mother gave me a hundred dollars to take drama. At the time it was a gigantic sum of money. So I took drama.

IS: Was living in Palm Springs a happy time in your life?

TM: The first month I moved there, I threw up every single morning, as if I were pregnant. I was a kid going through a lot of stress about being at a new school again, I'd been to so many different schools, I never had a friend for more than a year. In fact, I was in Palm Springs for about a year and a half and made pretty solid friends again, and then, midway through seventh grade--boom!--I had to move again. I went back to L.A. to live with my mother, and she told me that I had to make a choice for eigth grade.

IS: What kind of choice?

TM: I could go to professional school and focus on acting or go to a regular school and focus on school. So I chose the professional school. In ninth grade I did a play for a third of the year, and the tenth grade was home study. I eventually got my high school equivalency but as far as I'm concerned I have a ninth-grade education and not a great one. And I had been a great student up to seventh grade.

IS: So you have a disconnnected relationship wiht education?

TM: Yeah. I wanted some stability but because of all the moving around, it wasn't there. Having to go meet new kids for like the twelfth time was too much--I couldn't take it. I became really rascally around that time and ditched school a lot. My mom and I would get into huge fights, where she would beg me to go to school. She would threaten me with truant officers and I would say, "Go ahead, Mom. Here's the phone. Do you want me to dial the number?" I knew in the end she wouldn't have the heart to do it. Anyway, around that tenth-grade year, I started to read acting books and I'd do one play and then another and I became really interested in acting. Part of it was that I was always a big fan of movies and had a real respect for actors.

IS: Did you go to a lot of movies when you were a little kid?

TM: Yeah. When I lived with my dad, my mom would come and pick me up and the weekend would consist of going to eat somewhere and going to see a movie, and sometimes we'd sneak from one to the next. I liked every movie I saw in those days.

IS: So at some point the pleasure those experiences gave you must have fed into your feeling that you could be the one up on the screen?

TM: Uh-huh, and once I began acting and I'd been in it for a year or two, I decided I really wanted to succeed. I was doing a first rehearsal of a play in L.A. one time when I was sixteen and I remember I was pretty much scared out of my mind. But when the director asked me to get up and sing, because I'm a terrible singer I decided the only way to get through it was to take the room. That was quite a breakthrough for me.

IS: Was that the first time you'd ever taken a room?

TM: No, no. As a kid I was always kind of a nut, you know? (laughs) I remember when I was four years ols I sang "Zippity Doo Dah" at a local talent show. I've always liked to embarrass people, and on that occasion, when I was onstage singing, I said, "My mom is in the audience and she's right there, everybody. Look!"

IS: One of the first movies you did, when you were sixteen, was This Boy's Life [1993]. How did that come about?

TM: Around the time I was auditioning for that I was developing a taste for movies from the '70s with Hoffman and De Niro and Pacino and Nicholson. I thought anything else was utter horseshit. And then suddenly I was one of ten kids or so reading with De Niro for the main kid part in This Boy's Life . I was terrified. I think I did a really poor job with the audition. Leo [DiCaprio] got the part, of course, but I was given a tiny role in the film. It was like the first respectable gig I'd gotten.

IS: This whole generation of new young stars is an interesting subject. So many came from L.A., and so many started off as kid actors going around to audition.

TM: They should make some weird documentary on kids auditioning. Whether they come from out of town or whether they live in L.A., the pressure that's put on them can be such twisted shit. I knew a nine-year-old girl who didn't get a job after six weeks, and she said, "I was happy to go home, but I was sad because everyone got a job and I didn't..."

IS: It's a little like child labor. There's a difference with kids who know what they want, who have a dream to be in pictures, but the ones who get pulled around because of someone else's ambitions always remind me of those turn-of-the-century photographs by Lewis Hine, which documented the cruelty of kids being put to work in factories. He had to disguise his camera to get those pictures. In the entertainment business it's all out in the open, and it even looks glamorous. But if it's not what someone wants, it's a whole other story. Anyway, you obviously started to want it. Tell me your sense of why.

TM: Acting gives you a sense of community and that drew me into it. You go around and see these same kids at auditions, and even though there's some weird competition going on, there's also some continuity. So Leo and I were friends, and going into read for This Boy's Life we said to each other, "No hard feelings if the other one gets the big part, and whoever gets it will help the other person get a part in the movie." I was really excited when Leo got the part and I was excited to be in the movie myself. It was really cool doing it, because Leo knew what a crazy fan I was of De Niro's. I remember being in L.A. when Leo was up in Canada starting rehearsal. I got home one day and checked my machine and it said, "Hey, Tobe, it's Leo. What's up, man? I'm just crusin' around up here in Bob's car." He goes, "Hold on, someone wants to say hi." And Robert De Niro gets on my machine and goes, "Hey, Tobey, how ya doin'? Lookin' forward to getting you up here. Take good care of your buddy Leo." Then Leo got on and he was like, "Hey, I'll talk to you later." Click. This was unreal to me.

IS: You were obviously doing something right to land the part you did. Do you think that's partly to do with drive?

TM: There was a point where I snapped into this real aggressive fervor, this clawing to acheive what I wanted. I've relaxed a little bit, but for a while I was going nuts. When I lived with my father and uncle, I'd help my uncle around the house and in the garage, and I became really efficient at that because I was kind of afraid. He was a real controlling perfectionist, and partly as a result I'm a perfectionist, too. I'm really hard on myself and I'm hard on others who are close to me. I just start seeing all the flaws in myself and even in my mother, who I love and who I think had done really well with her life. This is the side of myself I don't like so much. Half the time I'm beating myself up and half the time I'm going, Relax, it's OK. The idea is not to be a perfectionist but to be aware of your shit and work on it. So I try to allow myself to make mistakes. But at the same time, I still have this motivation to be successful.

Anyway, by the time I was sixteen, I felt I had so much inside me. I've always known that I have a really powerful spirit and that in life you can have almost anything you want. But you have to be ready to do the things you want to do. In that respect, watching Leo was great for me because he's really good and I respect him as an actor. And also the fact that his success has opened up tons of parts for guys my age. He's almost singlehandly caused this whole youth thing to explode. Obviously there were kids before him like River Phoenix, but Leo's the pioneer of it right now and I have him to thank in a large way. Our relationship has gone through some weird turns because success has been so extreme for both of us, especially for him. He had a different family life from mine but he was also really poor growing up. I used to drive by his house and as I was pulling up I would watch the blue glow coming from his room. He was this little tiny blond kid playing video games. And something else we shared in common at that age was that we hated being underestimated because we were young.

In a way, as actors, we are all really selfish and on our own driven paths. But, at the same time, we are all supportive of each other adn not that jealous. My actor friends are some of the most phenomenal people I have ever met. For Leo and me, it goes back to those auditions we used to go on together and to wishing each other well when we went up for This Boy's Life.

IS: What came next for you after that movie?

TM: For a while I did fairly well. I started to make money and get more important jobs, but at the same time I started to become less hungry. I became more interested in partying. I was into it for the social aspect, but in reality I wasn't participating when all my friends were dancing and having fun and talking to girls. I was just like a piece of furniture. From seventenn to nineteen I went into some weird, weird place. I was constantly quiet. I was really shy and insecure with girls. I had absolutely no confidence. I became bitter and sarcastic. All my friends called me an old man 'cause I liked to play golf and smoke cigarettes. Around nineteen I went up for this film, Empire Records [1995]. The director [Allan Moyle] loved me. He said, "This is my hip-pocket kid--I don't know where to put him yet but he's definitely going to be one of the leads." But when I went into read for the film I wasn't prepared and I sabotaged my chance for getting a big part. I disappointed Allan and I disappointed myself, but my agent got me a small part in the film. The way it turned out, that movie symbolized a lot of shit I was into at the time--youth and music and taking control of my life. I don't know if destiny is exactly an accurate way to describe it, but the experience was a lot about change.

IS: It sounds like a big change.

TM: I'll tell you. I went out to the set in North Carolina and it was like a party scene. The rest of the cast had been working together for a month or so, and I again felt like this extreme outsider, desperate to fit in. I was really uncomfortable. I was going to extremes. I didn't want to use my dry, sarcastic, cutting humor anymore; I wanted to have really honest communication, but I just couldn't find my spot. There was a real sadness for me at the time.

IS: What happened?

TM: Well, I had a kind of semi-breakdown. I thought about my life in the past and my relationship with my father in particular. I decided that I needed to quit the movie and go home to L.A. to live with my mom. Not worry about acting for six months. I had read a little bit of The Celestine Prophecy , about how there are no accidents, and I was thinking that everything was happening on purpose. I went to Allan and I asked to be let go. He was very understanding and one of the things he said to me was, "I want you to write a script for me, and I want it to be about you and a friend. You're the more intellectual and introverted guy and your friend is more outgoing. I want it to be about how you guys find the middle ground of communication." And this exactly paralleled my relationships with some of my friends. He said, "Here's a good title: There Are No Accidents. " It echoed in my head and I just freaked out. Then he said, "Here's a better title: Make It Stop."

IS: What did you do?

TM: I went back to L.A. I was kind of lost for a couple of days. I was calling therapists, trying to get some help. I talked to friend of mine, telling him about needing a spiritual shift in my life, needing to have control again, and he's like, "That sounds great. But it's not about having control of your life again. It's about letting go of that." He suggested I talk to this mutual friend of ours who was going through some similar stuff. I called the guy and said, "I need help. I'm lost."

IS: And the guy helped you get help?

TM: Yeah. And I found these guys who ended up being my roommates for the next year and a half, which was a great growing environment. For the next year, none of the exterior things in life mattered to me anymore. I quit acting for a while and told my agent I didn't want to go on any auditions. Then all the inner work started paying off externally.

IS: In what ways specifically?

TM: Things started to turn around and I began to participate in life and, no matter how much I fear I had about being judged, I would get out there and dance a bit at parties and start talking to people, even thought I was almost trembling at times. It became like a personal triumph to walk through fear like that. And what happened was that I started getting good work and girls began paying attention to me. I got a bit lost in that. Because...

Is: You're human.

TM: I'm human and I was getting to taste this stuff I desired for so long, but only through letting go of it, you know? I've been struggling ever since with that. Trying to find a good balance. Because the external success just keeps growing. It's now on its own course. I don't control it.

IS: As you got on your feet again which movies came about first?

TM: The start of it was a short film I did called The Duke of Groove [1995]. It was with Kate Capshaw and Uma Thurman and it ended up being nominated for an Oscar for Best Short. Kate was amazingly supportive. I remember telling her about my life one day, semi-complaining. She says, "Tobey, would you really change one thing? Because all those tings led you up to who you are now." And I had to admit she was right.

IS: Was The Ice Storm an important one for you?

TM: Yes. It was the first feature where I had a significant part with great players, a major director, Ang Lee, and a great screenplay. It was also about something I could relate to--I wasn't living it at that moment but it was close enough that I could still feel it and at the same time bring some humor to it. I played Paul, a kid who's growing up in a family that was falling apart and needed a tragedy to bring it back together. My character is kind of removed from the family because he goes to boarding school, and he's the one who makes the right moral decisions supposedly.

IS: Did you feel good about your performance?

TM: Not entirely, but it was great working with people like Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and Christina Ricci. It was just what I needed.

Is: Ang Lee's a great outsider, too, of course.

TM: And so sweet. He's very quiet and the way he moves and speaks is very soft but demands so much respect. He's very serious about his work, so it sets the tone for everyone else. I'm really fortunate to have just shot his next flick, which is a Western called Ride With the Devil .

IS: I understand that your new movie Pleasantville, is partly set in a televised American small town that is perfect to begin with but goes wrong when real life starts seeping in. Since The Truman Show tapped into similar consciousness it makes me feel that something's in the air--and maybe it's a recognition that harsh realities is more truthful than seeking out utopias that can never exist. So tell me about Pleasantville in your own words.

TM: Reese Witherspoon and I play a sister and brother who are complete opposites. Reese's character is only interested in boys and her social status. My character is intellectual and not very good socially. He's obsessed with this '50s TV show called Pleasantville that's like Father Knows Best or Leave It to Beaver , where everything is pleasant. Somehow we get zapped back into the Pleasantville show. I wasn't sure about doing the movie until I realized what a powerful concept it is.

Did it meet with your expectations?

TM: It was a $40-million movie and I had a lead role, so there was a lot of pressure on me. To be honest with you, I'm not sure how I did.

IS: Are you where you want to be right now?

TM: I'm getting there. I have a girlfriend for the first time in my life, someone I've cared about consistently for a while. She's showing me that work is not the end of everything. She has good relations with her family and I use that as an example. I'm becoming a little bit more relaxed in my relationships and with work. I am realizing that work is not this sacred freaky thing. I want to be responsible about it, but it's not the meter for who I am or what my worth is.

IS: It sounds like you want to be responsible for yourself first.

TM: Yes. And that means I don't want to do four movies a year. I would prefer to do one film a year and something I've chosen very carefully. Whatever I do, I should put myself, my heart, my head into it 100 percent. Because doing a movie is a lot of work, more than I ever thought it was. But I'm still a kid. I'm growing up and I want to grow up. But I don't want to miss anything, you know?