Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire was charged with marijuana possession in North Carolina in 1994, one year before his sobriety journey began, In Touch can exclusively confirm.
The actor, now 48, was 18 years old at the time. He pled guilty and had 18 months of supervised probation, according to online records viewed by In Touch.
It’s possible the charge contributed to a turning point in Maguire’s life, as he revealed in 2003 that he had been sober since he was 19 years old. The Great Gatsby star began attending AA meetings at the time and has steered clear of any “mind-altering substances” ever since.
“It totally changed my life,” he told Playboy Magazine in print. “[AA is] no-frills spirituality. There are no hokey traditions. It’s just all practical. There are no holes in the program. It’s so, so simple. I come in, I ask for help. The person doesn’t tell me what to do, they tell me what they did.”
As for why he decided to become sober, Maguire explained to Men’s Journal in 2007 that he has an “addictive nature” that began to take over in his late teens.
“An obsessive-compulsive nature — well, I don’t know that’s what it is clinically. But I go to addictive extremes, and before I got sober, that became routine,” he said.
Maguire opened up about his sobriety journey again in 2013, telling Belfast Telegraph that he had “some difficulty” as a teen with substance abuse. “I had to make some life decisions and change some of my behavior. I got sober at 19 and have been sober since so there was no excess in that regard from 19 on,” he shared.
Maguire began film acting in 1989. His big break arrived in 1997 when he starred in the film The Ice Storm as a boarding school student named Paul Hood. Of course, many fans know him as Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, which was released in 2002, 2004 and 2007. He reprised his role in the 2021 film Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Though Maguire’s career was busy in the late 2000s, he became much pickier with his roles after the Spider-Man trilogy, even taking a break for a few years between 2014 and 2017. During his time off, he told Nylon why he decided to be more selective about the projects he took on.
“It’s always difficult to find projects that I want to get involved in, so that’s a continuous challenge,” Maguire said. “It’s a lot of commitment for me and it’s a big investment, or the sense of the investment is really big. When you’re working with people you like and stories you like, then no matter how difficult it is, there’s a kind of excitement and passion for what you’re doing. And when it doesn’t work out that way, where you’re not in love with the story — I don’t want to say ‘in love’ — but when you’re not interested, constantly interested, and curious to keep digging and pushing, then it’s just painful and not as much fun. So I try to avoid that.”
