Roles wearing Maguire out

After making "Spider-Man," "Seabiscuit" and "Spider-Man 2" back to back, Tobey Maguire isn't necessarily looking to play a couch potato, but he'd like something less strenuous than his recent roles.

"I definitely would like to do a film where I didn't have to work out three or four hours a day," Maguire said. "I don't mind if the film itself is kind of physical, but maybe where my physique didn't matter as much. I'll take an hour a day."

It's tough playing a young man whose encounter with a genetically altered spider has turned him into a superhero able to fly through the canyons of New York City by means of webs he shoots from his wrists. In "Spider-Man 2," opening in theaters on Wednesday, Peter Parker (Maguire) questions the crime-fighting lifestyle he has adopted and the sacrifices it has elicited from him.

In particular, he hates the wall his secret identity has built between him and his true love, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). And his cover might be blown when scientist-turned-monster Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) uses the people Peter loves to get to Spider-Man.

"Peter Parker's just in a different place in his life," Maguire tells reporters during interviews on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, Calif. "It's wearing on him, being Spider-Man and not having a life of his own.

"I always thought it was peculiar how this kid couldn't see how he could just have a little balance in his life and things would be a little better for him. But there are complications to that, which I understand. He doesn't want to put his loved ones in danger. . . . But he also has these gifts and wants to use them responsibly."

The phenomenal success of 2002's "Spider-Man," which earned $820 million worldwide and made Maguire a household name, guaranteed the creation of a sequel, and the actor had no hesitations about reuniting with the "Spider-Man" team.

"I like everybody," he said. "It's a good show, and it feels like a family situation."

Director Sam Raimi wanted to do more than rehash the first film's plot and pile on the special effects.

"I really wanted to please the audience," said Raimi. "There were a lot of different directions the story could have taken in the second 'Spider-Man,' so I tried to think about what they must have been attracted to in the first one, and I think I came up with the answer that they were probably most attracted to the characters and the stories of Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker versus the bigger extravaganza type of effects or visuals or making it louder or bigger."