Born in the Bronx in 1968, Cuba Gooding Jr moved to Los Angeles when his father had a hit single with his R&B group, the Main Ingredient, in 1972. He studied martial arts before turning to acting, winning critical acclaim for his performance in Boyz n the Hood in 1991 and an Oscar for his role in Jerry Maguire in 1997. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sara and their three children

Go onto YouTube and you can watch Cuba Gooding Jr leaping around like a toddler on several litres of Sunny D at the Oscars ceremony in 1997. Waving his statuette for best supporting actor and thanking life, the universe and the almighty Tom Cruise, his Jerry Maguire co-star, he made possibly the most hyperactive acceptance speech of all time.

This was a man who was going to take the world by storm; he was on the up and he wanted everyone to know it. So what happened? It’s hard to imagine that the likes of Daddy Day Camp, Boat Trip and Norbit (and those are just a few of the recent turkeys) were the sort of Hollywood dreams running through Gooding’s head as he leapt around that stage, refusing to stop talking even when the orchestra started up his exit music.

“Do I regret some decisions? Oh man, are you kidding? Are you kidding?” he shrieks, shaking his head. “I passed on Spielberg. Yeahhhh. Amistad [Spielberg’s 1997 film about a real-life mutiny on a slave ship]. “I was, like, ‘Show me the money! You want me to play what? A slave? I don’t know.’ What was I thinking? I thought it was all about the role, but now I realise I’d have been better off picking the right director.”

True to this new insight, Gooding can be seen in American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott, which has just been released on DVD. Gooding has a cameo role – Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe play the leads – but at least the film is not another stinker. “I heard it was Ridley; I was in,” he says. “I didn’t care what was in the movie.”

In London to promote the film, he’s sitting in a fashionable Soho hotel, talking 19 to the dozen with the energy of a man half his age. He claims turning 40 has changed his perspective. He can “look back and laugh”, he says.

He’s calmer, he says, more content with the simple things in life, happy just to spend time with his family. A black man with a white wife, he is backing Barack Obama for president and hopes the United States is heading for more optimistic times as well.

His change of attitude is reflected in the trusty old Chevrolet Suburban SUV parked outside the Los Angeles home he shares with Sara, his high-school sweetheart and now wife of almost 14 years, their two sons, Spencer, 13, Mason, 11, and two-year-old daughter Piper. “I used to go through cars: a BMW convertible, traded that in, got a big Mercedes and so on,” he says. “I had another BMW about a year and a half ago and then I just said, ‘You know what? I’m keeping my Suburban’.” He’s had the same one since 2001 and can’t bring himself to sell it. “It’s got duct tape under one light but that’s my car,” he says.

He’s making a good stab at portraying himself as just an ordinary, low-key guy with a bashed-up SUV, until he adds: “I’ve got five TVs in it, a PlayStation, DVD players and speakers and everything. It’s the Suburban from hell. I do quite like those Maybachs as well,” he adds mischievously. “Oh but I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t possibly justify that . . . maybe when I turn 50 . . .”

You sense Gooding has a fitful relationship with money, enjoying the freedom to splash the cash but with one eye on the next pay cheque. When his sons were younger, he admits to feeling financial pressure to keep taking any roles that came his way. “I’d see them [my sons] and I’d have to go call my agent and go find a job,” he says. “I’d go off and do a movie and I’d come back for a week and then it was like they’d remind me I’d gotta work and off I’d go again.”

His anxieties could date back to the financial ups and downs of his childhood. His father was lead singer with the Main Ingredient, an R&B group. When they had a hit with Everybody Plays the Fool in 1972, the Goodings moved from the Bronx, then a run-down part of New York, to a big house in the affluent Orange County, California.

Gooding remembers hurtling around its manicured grounds, aged no more than 12, on the shiny new moped that was the highlight of a teetering pile of Christmas presents for him and his elder sister. The gardeners had cleared a path for them to ride their moped across the lawns and together they enjoyed weeks of carefree biking, riding all over town (despite strict instructions not to take it beyond the garden). “It was the best Christmas ever,” says Gooding. “The tree was in one corner and the presents covered half the room. And there wasn’t one present that wasn’t for us [as well as his sister he has a younger brother, Omar, also an actor].”

Fast-forward four years and a teenage Gooding is behind the wheel of a cheap cream Hyundai, his parents have split up and he’s driving his mother to any job she can get to make ends meet. “Learning to drive was a necessity. My mom had to get a job and I had to learn to drive so I could take her there,” he says. “It wasn’t such a fun thing.”

Having witnessed the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, he tries to take good care of his own. “I try to never take Sara for granted,” he says, suddenly serious. “I try to appreciate every little thing and it helps.”

For his wife’s 30th birthday he bought her a 1960s black Porsche convertible. “Like the one Kelly McGillis drives in Top Gun. It was the big movie when we were in high school, when we first got together.”

It now sits alongside his old Suburban, like a flashier alter ego. Gooding says he’s happy with his lot. He hopes his acting stock is back up, he’s fit and healthy, and – despite the evidence of some of his more recent films – funny. “You can’t regret things too hard,” he says. “It’s God’s will. I know my time will come, you know?”

Now, if that nice Mr Spielberg would just pick up the phone . . .

My stuff...

On my CD player
I have all these playlists on my iPod like “hip-hop”, “feelgood” and “groove it” – that’s the one I listen to most. I’ve got everything in there from Kanye West to D’Angelo, from Sam Cooke to Coldplay

On my DVD player
Right now I’ve got movies that were nominated for Academy Awards that I haven’t watched yet. I think Into the Wild, the Sean Penn movie, will be next

In my parking space
A 2001 Chevrolet Suburban and a classic black convertible Porsche

I’ll never throw away
The connections I have with the people I love

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