Tobey Maguire Once Shared He Lost a Lot of Joy Starring in the 2009 Drama ‘Brothers’
Many know actor Tobey Maguire for his role as the titular character in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise. But after his work on the superhero films, he further expanded his filmography with many diverse roles.
But one of those roles left the actor in a somewhat joyless state.
Tobey Maguire co-starred in ‘Brothers’ alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman
Tobey Maguire was interested in doing Brothers before the film had even initially gotten off the ground. The 2009 feature followed a soldier and family man experiencing PTSD after a traumatic mission overseas.
Apart from the film’s idea, the Spider-Man star was also interested in the project because of the cast involved. Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman were also attached to the project, which piqued Maguire’s interest.
“I had heard about this project happening a while before anybody was talking to me about it and then I heard about it again when [director Jim Sheridan] and Jake was involved,” Maguire once said according to Black Film. “I got really excited about working with these guys and getting to play that relationship with Jake. It was something that really attracted me to it, other than the subject matter. The idea of working with Natalie, like she said.”
Tobey Maguire lost joy working on ‘Brothers’
Although Maguire may have enjoyed working on the project, Brothers had a surprising influence on the actor. But he didn’t notice the effects until after the film wrapped.
“I lost a lot of my joy while doing the movie,” Maguire once said in an interview with the LA Times. “I wasn’t even aware of it. I don’t mean it to sound goofy or artsy or something, but two days before we wrapped, I started telling some jokes and laughing, whatever, and it was like a release for me. I hadn’t done that in, like, two months.”
The Pleasantville star admitted that Brothers even followed him home to an extent.
“I’m not going home and calling myself by the character’s name or anything like that — I’ve got a wife; at that time, I had my older child and now we have two,” Maguire added. “But the general sort of tone of the piece and the character stuck with me — it was more like a mood. I was in a mood for two months. Then when it started to release, I started laughing and loosening up and my body felt different. I was like, ‘Wow. This has been so tough.'”
Tobey Maguire’s vision would go black from his intense training for ‘Brothers’
Aside from the mental difficulties of starring in the film, doing the movie also took a physical toll on Maguire. The Great Gatsby actor found himself shedding a large amount of weight for the movie. Combining his weight loss with the exercise he did for Brothers often left the actor in a fragile state.
“I’m certainly accustomed to it at this point,” he once said in an interview with Boston. “However, the extremity of this role in particular was very intense. I was on so few calories relative to the amount of exercise I was doing. If I stood up too quickly, my vision would go black, I would get faint, and I would have to grab on to something to keep from falling over.”
