I love being a dad: Tobey Maguire

"Spiderman" star Tobey Maguire says his life has started moving in a completely new direction now after his engagement and the birth of his daughter.

"I've changed a lot," said Maguire, pointing out that being father to six-month-old Ruby Sweetheart, his daughter with fiancée Jennifer Meyer, has been the biggest change of all, www.Hollywood.tv has learned.

The 31-year-old said: "I love being a dad! I love my daughter... yeah, it's definitely amazing! It's like everybody says, all the clichés are true - it's indescribable and you just have to be there to understand it. You know, you don't really get it until you're there."

"Spider-Man 3" co-star and friend Bryce Dallas Howard has seen firsthand what being a father has done to Maguire.

"Being a father was even more of a fulfilment of Maguire's natural instincts," she said. "And the natural way that he is in the world. And he is just... he is incredible.

"Furthermore, he's committed to the people around him being happy and being supported and loved," she added.

Having recently given birth to her own nine-week old baby boy, Theo, she said both Maguire and his fiancée Meyer were an inspiration during her own pregnancy.

"One of the most important people during my pregnancy was Meyer, Tobey's fiancée," Howard said.

"She's just an incredibly mindful parent, I mean, they both are and I really wanted to follow their example in every way. So I had the same doctor as them, the same midwife as them, everything because I knew that they did their research.

"I was calling them just a few days after the birth and he (Tobey) would stay on the phone with me for like an hour talking through things with me, and when Jen couldn't talk because she was nursing. I felt like that was really very much of a gift for me and my husband."

As he embarks on his new life with a fiancée and baby at home, Maguire finds himself having to think twice about the films and the activities he chooses.

"I think that the greatest effect having a baby will have is on what the locations of movies are, more so than what the content is, although it may affect my decisions about the content as well," he said.

First Published: Apr 23, 2007 19:04 IST