A Second Shot at Stardom in ‘Maguire’

NEW YORK — In “Jerry Maguire,” Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a wide receiver on a pro football team who’s in the waning days of his career. Before he goes, though, he wants one last fat contract, and in one of the film’s funniest scenes, he gets his agent, played by Tom Cruise, to repeat his demand: “Show me the money!” He means not just the dollars but the respect.

It’s the line of someone mired in the second tier but who truly wants to make it to the bigs. And it’s just one parallel, Gooding admits, with his own life.

Five years ago, Gooding, now 28, did briefly make it to the top, as the star of the hit “Boyz N the Hood,” John Singleton’s searing look at gang life (he played a good kid trying to resist it) in the tough streets of Los Angeles’ South-Central.

“When the movie came out, I thought I was the next ‘Wow this is it,’ ” he says on a recent rainy afternoon at the Sony building in midtown Manhattan. Every so often, his soft voice is drowned out by Tom Cruise’s raucous laughter in the next room. “I thought, ‘My movie is a hit. This is how it will be from here on out.’ ”

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But rather than leading to the top roles, “Boyz” brought him starring roles in lesser-known flops, like the boxing movie “Champion” and “Lightning Jack” with Paul Hogan. He’s also had small roles in such better films as HBO’s “Tuskegee Airmen,” “Outbreak” and “A Few Good Men,” his first film with Cruise. So he wasn’t expecting much when he was called to read for “Jerry Maguire” on a couple of hours’ notice and found himself next to Robin Williams. (Williams wasn’t playing the role; he was doing the read-through of the Maguire role as a favor to producer James Brooks.)

A couple of weeks later, he still wasn’t expecting much when he read with Cruise, the newly signed lead. But the two had such chemistry together (off-camera too; they play ice hockey together when Cruise is in L.A.) that Gooding said he could feel the characters taking shape.

Four months later, he got the part officially and began the physical part of beefing up for the role. “I worked out for three months with weights, three days on, one day off. And that,” he says with a laugh, “was hell. . . .”

Still, nothing prepared him for the actual rigors of playing real football with several pro players from the Steelers and the Bengals. “I blew my knee out, my hamstrings,” he says. “Afterward, I had to stand in a garbage can full of ice. You don’t know how painful playing football is.”

That was the physical part. His character, Rod Tidwell, is also flamboyant, outrageous and very, very funny, so much so that many feel he steals the movie from Cruise. (The outrageousness is modeled on football star Deion Sanders.) But underneath, the character is emotional and vulnerable; his apparent greed is the outgrowth of a desire to provide for the family to whom he’s devoted, to give them what he’s never had.

It’s a longing that goes all the way back in Tidwell’s life. It’s a desire to which Gooding can relate, as the father with wife Sarah of two young sons, Spencer, 2, and newborn Mason, and as a son who, in his early years, had a lot and then had it taken away.

One of three children of Cuba Gooding Sr., the lead singer in the ‘70s soul band the Main Ingredient, Cuba spent his childhood surrounded by glamour and fame. “We lived in a big house and had chauffeurs, we’d go backstage at the concerts and then in fifth grade . . . bang! Rock bottom,” he says.

His parents divorced and he moved with his mother, brother and sister to the desert just outside Barstow, on the opposite side of pop culture. “I’d listen to my friends talking about the Jackson family,” he says. “I’d known them. I was in an acting workshop with Janet and La Toya the year before. Jermaine would come to the house, asking my dad to produce his album. Now I was with the audience star-struck by these people . . . and I thought, ‘Someday, I’m going to get back there.’ ”

But even more difficult than being out of the limelight was the financial hardship his family faced. There were stretches of being evicted and living in a car, of living on welfare. He mixed with kids who could have been extras in “Boyz N the Hood.” But through it all, he always kept his head above it and always worked. He pulled weeds in the desert for cash. At 16, he got a job at a taco stand and later made his professional debut break-dancing in the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics.

He decided that acting would be his ticket back and performed in school productions. From the Olympics job, he got an agent and started getting roles after high school, small roles in such TV series as “Hill Street Blues.” Other series appearances followed, along with commercials. “I always worked,” he says. “It was getting stuff I wanted that was the hard part.” And then he got “Boyz N the Hood.”

Now, his position may be somewhat more established; he moved on from “Jerry Maguire” to another A-list project, “Old Friends,” starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. And he’s heard the thick-and-heavy positive vibes about what one critic called his “star-making” turn in “Maguire.”

But whether it will really help him toward his goal, being in control of his projects isn’t something he wants to jinx by discussing.

“I really don’t talk about the future,” he says.