Tobey Maguire, From Wandering Into Shelters As A Kid To Making $30-$40 Million In Just 4 Years – Rags To Riches (Photo Credit: IMDb)
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Just like Robert Downey Jr and Daniel Radcliffe are etched in our minds as Iron Man and Harry Potter, respectively, Tobey Maguire will always be our original Spider-Man. While the actor had a less than humble beginning, he now has his own production company, Material Pictures. So how did he make this jump from rags to riches?
Well, the answer is loads of hard work and organising high stake poker games for Hollywood’s biggest stars and some loaded business figures. Shocked? In his book, ‘Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist,’ writer Houston Curtis opened up about it and spoke about the poker games the duo organised.
Just so that you understand the Spider-Man actor’s humble beginning, in a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Tobey Maguire revealed he used to couch surf and even went to shelters. He said, “As a kid, I was very poor. I mean, it’s all relative, but we would get groceries from neighbours. I always had a roof over my head, but I slept on couches of relatives, and some night we wandered into a shelter. My family had food stamps and government medical insurance. And I wanted to get out of that, so my ambition was initially to make money; I was pretty driven.”
And being poor is a thing of the past now for him. As per past media reports, the Spider-Man star made close to $30-$40 million in just a matter of years by playing cards. According to a past report in Hindustan Times, writer Houston Curtis once opened up about the reasons behind Tobey Maguire not saying yes to many films. He noted that it was so because Tobey has cultivated a career as a poker player.
According to the writer, Tobey Maguire and he would run high-stakes poker games frequented by stars like Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. Revealing that they have been doing so since as far back as 2005, Curtis estimated that Maguire “could have made up to $30 to $40 million from the games,” in like four years.
According to Houston Curtis’ book, ‘Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist’, the poker game was designed to “hustle the well-bankrolled competition from the start”. The book stated that it was Curtis’ job to dump chips to the rich at the table, allowing Tobey Maguire to use his poker skill to win huge sums. These poker games ran every Tuesday at L.A. locales like the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel and the Viper Room nightclub from 2005 to 2009.
Now that’s a story of rags to riches! In fact, Maguire’s underground success at poker was said to be the inspiration behind the Player X character in Molly’s Game.
