Jeff Maguire is an American screenwriter. Regarded for his talent for writing sports films, Jeff Maguire got his first screenwriting break with his script Escape to Victory, a film about soccer directed by John Huston in 1981. His most recent contribution is Gridiron Gang, released in 2006. Maguire's most famous film is In the Line of Fire starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, for which he received a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for 1993. In 1990, Maguire was approached by producer Jeff Apple to develop his Secret Service agent concept into a film treatment. Maguire was in debt to his relatives and about to have his utilities turned off when his script based on Apple's concept, "In the Line of Fire," went into a bidding war between Tom Cruise, Sean Connery, and Clint Eastwood. When he received a call from Eastwood congratulating him on the completed deal Jeff's wife reportedly had to return a dress so they could afford to go out to dinner to celebrate. Prior to this, various moguls had rejected and almost destroyed the story. Dustin Hoffman cleverly added the hero's guilt over failing to save JFK, then exited; Tom Cruise's people demanded this be deleted, because a 28-year-old hero would not have been around for JFK. The dead-broke writer spurned about $100,000 from Cruise, but wound up with Clint Eastwood and about $1,000,000. Jeff Maguire is a graduate of Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts. Raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, Maguire was once a railroad worker, a waiter, and a volunteer counselor with Mother Teresa's group, Missionaries of Charity, in the Pico-Union section of downtownLos Angeles, working primarily with Hispanic gangs. In the 1980s and 90s, he also frequented the famous Manhattan Beach, Californiavideo storeVideo Archives, where future filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary were clerks. Today, Jeff Maguire is a follower of Meher Baba and has contributed to the Meher Baba journal, Glow International. Jeff Maguire appears in In the Line of Fire briefly as a secret service officer running alongside the president's limousine.
