The `Sorcerer`s Apprentice` actor was fascinated by movies and TV from a very young age and spent a lot of time trying to work out how to get on television, but didn`t find a focus for his ambition until he was a teenager.
He said: "I would watch the TV intently and try to figure out how to get inside it from the living room carpet.
"Going to elementary school, I envisaged crane shots of myself which would widen out to show me as
this tiny little boy walking down the street.
"But it wasn`t until I was 15 that I went to the New Beverly Cinema, a little arthouse cinema in Los Angeles, and I discovered James Dean in `East of Eden`. The scene where he`s trying to give Raymond Massey the money from the beans he sold on his father`s birthday blew my mind."
The 46-year-old star also revealed he was attracted to his latest movie - which is based on the Disney adventure `Fantasia` - because he wanted to make a film about magic.
He explained: "You can`t really survive in the arts if you don`t keep the magical child`s mind alive.
"Magic is really very simple. It`s about imagination, plus willpower, focused in such a way to create conscious effects in the material world. Every book is a work of magic, every speech that moves people is a work of magic, every movie is a work of magic."
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