Chris Pine on How Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford Inspired His Acting Career

Chris Pine spoke with People at Wednesday night’s premiere of his directorial debut, Poolman, telling the outlet how Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford inspired his career in equal measure.

Speaking about the celebrities he idolized as a kid, Pine told the outlet, "I remember being eight years old and dressing up in a fedora and a three-piece suit and pretending to be a character in Bugsy Malone,” he said of Alan Parker’s 1976 spoof which cast children as adult gangsters.

“Or taking a pencil and pretending I was Tom Cruise in Top Gun," Pine continued. "So all of the business appealed to me and all the characters."

Pine went on about his other acting inspirations, which included some unexpected names. "But certainly…I guess I simultaneously wanted to be Harrison Ford and also wanted to be, like, Gary Oldman or Lee Marvin, or Walter Brennan," Pine said.

Marvin and Brennan were character actors known for playing cowboys and villains. Marvin died in 1987 and Brennan in 1974, long before Pine began his career in earnest.

Poolman stars Pine as a burnt-out pool cleaner who solves local Los Angeles crimes in between shifts at his tiki-inspired apartment complex. The Star Trek star was motivated to make the film, an homage to The Big Lebowski and Elmore Leonard novels, as a tribute to the same stars who inspired him, and the city in which he was raised.

"I saw the highs and lows of the industry,” Pine, the son of CHiPs star Robert Pine, admitted. “And I grew up around people that were living the dream and people that desperately wanted to be in the dream," he continued. "So this is really my tribute to that part of Los Angeles."

Poolman hits cinemas on May 10. You can check out a trailer below.