When he's not busy signing $100 bills for fans (he writes "Show me the..." and draws an arrow pointing to Ben Franklin's head) or playing celebrity hockey games with his buddy Cruise and Wayne Gretzky, Gooding hangs out at home in L.A. with his wife, Sara, a former teacher (whom he met at age 21 before all the hype); their 2-year-old son, Spencer; their new baby, Mason; and their three gargantuan Great Danes, Lollipop, Pitch Black Jr., and Woodrow.
Impressive for a former taco vendor whose first professional gig was as a break-dancer on stage behind Lionel Richie at the 1984 Olympic Games. But there's one twist in this happy story: Although he has risen to the top of his game playing a hotshot NFL star who sticks with his longtime agent even after hitting the big time, Gooding himself has demonstrated a peculiar restlessness when it comes to the people who have helped guide his career. He's switched agents six times in 10 years and has changed publicists four times in the past three months. That's a lot of shuffling in an industry where everybody knows everybody else's business.
"If an agent is instrumental in helping to secure a role for an actor and the results are as perfect as they have been for Cuba, why change things? What Cuba's got is what we all strive for," says Paradigm agent Sam Gores, who represented Gooding when he got the role in Maguire. "This decision can't possibly be about business. It's become about character and integrity and principles."
Last month, Gooding told Gores he was signing on with the higher-profile Creative Artists Agency, which also represents Crowe and Cruise. Gores should not have been surprised. Gooding left him before when things were going well, after Gores helped get him the part in Boyz N the Hood. "Cuba treats representatives like pieces of meat," adds an agent who has worked with Gooding. "He wants them to show him the money, yet once they do, he's gone. There's no excuse for this kind of hopping around. To me, it's only an indication that he's going to trip himself up down the road."
The irony of all this happening to the man who played the principled character in Jerry Maguire is certainly not lost on Crowe. "Cuba's got his moment in sight, and he just wants to handle things correctly. You can only imagine what it's like for an actor who's cold trying to get the attention of an agent who's hot. It's brutal. But dumping a longtime associate who's a friend sends a weird signal. If you make a stink about something in the business, it's going to get around."
"It's all very funny to me," Gooding says with a smile, leaning back in his chair after a photo shoot at the Santa Monica airport. He looks fit in his snug black T-shirt, even though he isn't quite as buffed as he was in Jerry Maguire. (He lifted weights for three weeks to get his lean 5'11", 180-pound frame into pro-football-player form before his oft-recounted audition for the movie, during which he dropped his pants to show he had no problem with nudity.) "Nobody talked about how many people I pissed off after I did [the flop] Lightning Jack."
