As a burgeoning actor, Chris Pine had his sights set high.

Speaking with PEOPLE on Wednesday, April 24, at the premiere of his directorial debut Poolman in Los Angeles, the 43-year-old named several actors who got their start in Hollywood before him who he looked up to when he was growing up.

“I remember being 8 years old and dressing up in a fedora and a three-piece suit and pretending to be a character in Bugsy Malone. Or taking a pencil and pretending I was Tom Cruise in Top Gun,” Pine says. “So all of the business appealed to me and all the characters.”

“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,” he adds.

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Set in Los Angeles, Poolman follows pool attendee Darren Barrenman (Pine), “a native Los Angeleno who spends his days looking after the pool of the Tahitian Tiki apartment block and fighting to make his hometown a better place to live,” according to a synopsis of the film, which Pine also co-wrote.

“When he is tasked by a femme fatale to uncover the truth behind a shady business deal, Darren enlists the help of his friends to take on a corrupt politician and a greedy land developer,” the synopsis adds. “His investigation reveals a hidden truth about his beloved city and himself.”

Pine recalled to PEOPLE at Wednesday’s premiere how he “grew up in a specific kind of L.A. that was kind of on the Boulevard of Dreams and kind of on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

“I saw the highs and lows of the industry. And I grew up around people that were living the dream and people that desperately wanted to be in the dream,” he says. “So it’s no accident that everybody in this film, even the bad guy, was a musical-theater major that came out here to do a pilot.”

“My girlfriend [in the movie] was once on Melrose Place and is now a Pilates instructor, and my best friend Jack Dennisoff, [played by] Danny DeVito, is a B-movie horror director that never really made it,” Pine continues. “So this is really my tribute to that part of Los Angeles.”

That doesn’t mean the city doesn’t have its downsides for him — in fact, he tells PEOPLE that what “frustrates” him about L.A. is “everything.”

“The fact that we don’t have above-ground public transportation, that the red cars were ripped out, that we don’t really have a deep appreciation for some of the fabulous architecture that we have here, that we’re building buildings right now that I feel like are built for practicality more than they are in the spirit of beauty,” the Wonder Woman actor explains.

“That disappoints me, but it is my home,” Pine adds.

Poolman hits theaters May 10.