Cinema Experts

“I was pretty ambitious. I felt like I had a good imagination and vision for my life. And I had people telling me 'You are driving the vehicle of your life here. You are the master of your own destiny in a sense. Do whatever you want to do.”
Maguire was born in Santa Monica, California. His father, Vincent Maguire, was a construction worker and a cook. His mother, Wendy Brown, is a secretary turned screenwriter and producer. During his childhood, Maguire entertained the idea of becoming a chef and to that end wanted to enroll in a Home Economics class as a sixth grader. His mother offered him $100 USD to take a drama class instead, and Tobey agreed.
The nomadic nature of his school-age years began to take a toll on Maguire emotionally, and finally, after yet another relocation to yet another school, Maguire dropped out of his freshman year of high school and never returned, deciding to focus himself on his blossoming acting career. By 2000, Maguire had taken the GED to officially graduate from high school, noting that during his high school days, he'd reached a point where “I wasn't doing school. I was showing up, but...not really giving myself.”
Maguire's first appearance in a feature film was in the 1989 movie The Wizard. In that movie, he played a goon of Lucas Barton, one of three competitors at a video game competition, and had no lines. Maguire initially worked as a child actor in the early 1990s, often playing roles much younger than his chronological age; as late as 2002, Maguire was still playing teenagers while in his mid-20s. He appeared in a variety of commercials and TV and movie roles, working opposite such stars as Chuck Norris (Walker, Texas Ranger), Roseanne Barr (Roseanne), and Tracey Ullman (Tracey Takes On...). Eventually, Maguire was cast as the lead in the FOX TV series Great Scott, which was cancelled 5 weeks later.
During many of his auditions, Maguire found himself competing opposite another rising child star actor, Leonardo DiCaprio. The pair struck up a fast friendship and made an informal pact to help each other get parts in their movies/TV shows/other projects. For example, both auditioned for the same part in the 1990 TV series Parenthood; DiCaprio got the part, and Maguire later got a guest role at least partially due to DiCaprio's recommendation. The same scenario played itself out during casting for the 1993 movie This Boy's Life (featuring Robert DeNiro as the lead); DiCaprio got the main teen role (ironically, the character was named "Toby") and Maguire got a part as one of Toby's friends.
By the mid 1990s, Maguire was steadily working but becoming caught up in the hard-partying lifestyle of some of his fellow teen actors. In 1995, Maguire requested director Allan Moyle to release him from his part in the movie Empire Records. Moyle agreed, and all of Tobey's scenes were deleted from the final film. Maguire then sought help for an underaged drinking problem from Alcoholics Anonymous; he has been sober ever since.
As part of his recovery from alcohol and learning to deal with his self-described "addictive and obsessive/compulsive nature", Maguire changed his career path slightly in order to obtain roles where he and DiCaprio would not always be in competition for the same part, and the move paid off when he got the role of Paul Hood, a teenage boarding school student whose narration anchors the action in Ang Lee's 1997 film, The Ice Storm. This soon led to a variety of lead roles where he played a thoughtful boy coming of age, in films such as Pleasantville, The Cider House Rules, and Wonder Boys. In Ride with the Devil (1999), Maguire gave a virtuoso performance as Jakob Roedel, opposite Jewel Kilcher. Though it gained little notice at the time, this film represents the best treatment ever of this part of American history. Maguire also played off his youthful-sounding voice in the 2001 children's movie Cats and Dogs, playing a beagle puppy named Lou.
In 2002, Maguire shot to superstardom as the web-slinging superhero Spider-Man in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, based on the popular Marvel comic book series. He reprised the part in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).
Maguire's performance as Spider-Man initially earned him some glowing reviews. Towards the third part of the franchise the actor experienced some backlash in the media. "For his part Mr. Maguire needs to stop relying on those great big peepers of his: simply widening your eyes to attract attention does not cut it when you’re over 30", remarked Manohla Dargis of the New York Times in her review of Spider-Man-3.
Though Maguire has not yet signed on for another sequel, the actor has denied reports that he will not return, stating, "I feel like the stories all deserve to be told, and, you know, if... the whole team wants to get back together, and we feel like we can make a good movie that's worth making, then I'm up for it."
Maguire solidified his stardom in 2003 with a leading role as the jockey John M. "Red" Pollard in the acclaimed film Seabiscuit, about the famous United States' racehorse Seabiscuit. In 2006, Maguire starred in his first villainous role as Corporal Patrick Tully in Steven Soderbergh's The Good German based on the Joseph Kanon novel of the same name opposite George Clooney and Cate Blanchett.
Maguire has also moved into another realm of filmmaking, producing. Maguire's production credits include 25th Hour (2002), Whatever We Do (2003), and Seabiscuit (2003), for which he served as executive producer.

“Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath."
When Caine first became an actor, he adopted the stage name "Michael Scott". His agent soon informed him, however, that another actor was already using the same name, and that he had to come up with a new name immediately. Speaking to his agent from a telephone box in Leicester Square in London, Caine looked around for inspiration, noted that The Caine Mutiny was being shown at the Odeon Cinema, and decided to change his name to "Michael Caine". He once joked to an interviewer that had he looked the other way, he would have ended up as "Michael One Hundred and One Dalmatians".
Caine's acting career began in Horsham, West Sussex. He responded to an advertisement for an assistant stage manager for the Horsham-based Westminster Repertory Company. This led to walk-on roles at the Carfax Theatre. After several minor roles, Caine came into the public eye as an upper-class British army officer in the 1964 film Zulu. This proved paradoxical, as Caine was to become notable for using a regional accent, rather than the received pronunciation hitherto considered proper for film actors. At the time, Caine's working-class cockney, just as with The Beatles' Liverpudlian accents, stood out to American and British audiences alike. Zulu was closely followed by two of his best-known roles: the spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965), and the woman-chasing title character in Alfie (1966). He went on to play Palmer in a further two films, Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion-Dollar Brain (1967). Caine made his first movie in the United States in 1966, after an invitation from Shirley MacLaine to play opposite her in Gambit. During the first two weeks, whilst staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he met long term friends John Wayne and agent "Swifty" Lazar.
After ending the 1960s with the equally iconic The Italian Job, with Noel Coward, and a solid role as an RAF fighter pilot, Squadron Leader Canfield, in the all-star cast of Battle of Britain (1969), Caine entered the 1970s with Get Carter, a British gangster film. Caine was busy throughout the 1970s, with successes including Sleuth (1972), opposite Sir Laurence Olivier and The Man Who Would Be King (1975), costarring Sir Sean Connery. By the end of the decade, he had moved to the U.S., but his choice of roles was beginning to be criticised. Caine was averaging two films a year, but these included such failures as The Swarm (1978), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), The Island (1980) and The Hand (1981). Although Caine also took better roles, including a BAFTA-winning turn in Educating Rita (1983) and an Oscar-winning one in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), he continued to appear in notorious duds like Jaws: The Revenge (1987) and Bullseye! (1990). Of the former, Caine famously said "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific".
The 1990s were a lean time for Caine as he found good parts harder to come by. His early '90s output included a villain in the Steven Seagal flop On Deadly Ground (1994), two straight to video Harry Palmer sequels and a few television movies. However, Caine's reputation as a pop icon was still intact, thanks to his roles in films such as The Italian Job and Get Carter. His performance in 1998's Little Voice was seen as something of a return to form, and won him a Golden Globe Award. Better parts followed, including The Cider House Rules (1999), for which he won his second Oscar, Last Orders (2001), The Quiet American (2002) and others which helped rehabilitate his reputation. Several of Caine's classic films have been remade to appeal to new, younger audiences, including The Italian Job, Get Carter, and Alfie. In 2005, he was cast as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred in the Batman film series. In 2006, he appeared in the films Children of Men and The Prestige.
Caine has been Oscar-nominated six times, winning his first Academy Award for the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, and his second in 1999 for The Cider House Rules, in both cases as a supporting actor. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993 for services to drama, and in 2000 he was knighted, becoming Sir Maurice Micklewhite. Unlike many actors who adopt their stage name for everyday use, Caine still uses his real name when he is not working.
Caine is a popular subject for impressionists and mimics, having a voice and manner of speaking that are distinctive, yet fairly easy to imitate. Most Caine impressions include the catchphrase "Not a lot of people know that”. In 1983, the remark really caught on, when Caine was given the line to say as an in-joke in the film Educating Rita. In 1984, he also put the name Not A Lot Of People Know That! to a book of trivial facts for charity.
Caine is one of only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting (either lead or supporting) in every decade since the 1960s. The other is Jack Nicholson.