Poker Hostess: Celeb Told Me to 'Bark Like a Seal'

In tell-all, Molly Bloom calls Tobey Maguire the 'worst loser'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 2, 2014 6:15 PM CDT
'Worst Loser' in Swanky Hollywood Poker Game Was...
Tobey Maguire arrives at the LA Premiere screening of "The Spoils of Babylon" at the DGA Theater on Tueday, Jan. 7, 2014 in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

The hostess of a high-stakes Hollywood poker game is dishing on her celebrity players in a new book, and Tobey Maguire, of all people, comes out the meanie. Molly Bloom says she's given up high living since the feds busted up her game, MyFox New York reports, but an excerpt of Molly's Game in Vanity Fair brings her glory days (at age 26!) back to life. Among her players: Ben Affleck ("tall and handsome, with a relaxed charisma"), Leonardo DiCaprio ("he gave me a crooked smile from under his hat"), and Maguire ("cute, too, and he seemed very friendly"). Seemed was apparently the word:

  • "Tobey was the worst tipper, the best player, and the absolute worst loser," she writes, and notes elsewhere, "You can tell a lot about a man’s character by watching him win or lose money. Money is the great equalizer."
  • The players often gambled for millions of dollars at the weekly private game, but Maguire rented Bloom his card shuffler for ... $200 per night.
  • She called him Hannibal Lecter because he could talk someone into folding a winning hand—and when Maguire won he'd "victoriously" show his bluff, she writes, according to E! Online. "To me, his actions were in really bad taste."
  • He so disapproved of her not-so-nominal cut (her income surpassed $4 million by 2009, ABC News reports) that he once told her to "bark like a seal" for a $1,000 tip. "You won't bark for a thousand dollars? Wowwww ... you must be really rich."

Check out the excerpt for more gossip and tense moments at the poker table. (More celebrity stories.)

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