While most kids were dreaming of new toys, playing outside with friends and watching their favorite cartoons, Tom Cruise was dreaming about killing dictators.

At the Korean premiere of “Valkyrie,”Cruise’s film about the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the actor admitted that his disdain for the Nazi leader led to a desire to take him out personally, according to a Reuters report.

“I always wanted to kill Hitler, I hated him,” Cruise, 46, said. “As a child studying history and looking at documents, I wondered, ‘why didn’t someone stand up and try to stop it?’ When I read the script, it was entertaining and informative to know what the challenges were and what it was like to be in the environment.”

Based on a true story, Cruise plays Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg in “Valkyrie,” a German solider who plants a briefcase bomb under a table at Hitler’s military headquarters. The assassination attempt proves unsuccessful and Stauffenberg is later executed by his co-conspirators.

Several skeptical critics predicted that the film would be a box-office bomb in the U.S., where it fared better than expected, reaching No. 4 in the North American box office during its opening weekend, Reuters said. The film opens Asia on Jan. 22 in Seoul, Korea.