Aladdin Star Scott Weinger Remembers First Time He Met Robin Williams: 'I'll Be Your Genie' (Exclusive)

Robin Williams' Aladdin costar Scott Weinger is reflecting on working with one of his childhood heroes ten years after the comedy legend's death.

Weinger, 48, was just 15 years old when he first met Williams, who died on Aug. 11, 2014, at 63, to begin production on Disney's 1992 animated classic Aladdin. Weinger voiced the title character in the movie, a young man who unexpectedly discovers a magic carpet and a lamp inhabited by a magical genie, voiced by Williams.

"I think it was when I first met him, we were introduced and they said, 'This is Scott, he's Aladdin.' And he shook my hand and he said, 'I'll be your genie,' " he tells PEOPLE of meeting Williams for the first time. "Which I thought was very cool."

Weinger says he idolized Williams' work from a young age and recalls that the late actor's 1980 film Popeye was one of the two movies his family owned with their first VCR set. By the time he turned 15 and landed his role in Aladdin, Williams' 1989 film Dead Poets Society had grown into "my ultimate, ultimate favorite movie," as he recalls.

Weinger and Williams often recorded dialogue for Aladdin together due to the comedian's tendency to improvise lines. He remembers one instance in which he "fell down laughing" during a recording session because Williams was making him — and everyone else in the studio — laugh so hard.

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"Everybody else in the recording studio was behind six inches of glass," he says. "And I looked through the window and I could see they were literally crying, just bent over crying. I tried all of my professional actorly discipline to not laugh, but eventually it got to be too much, and I just hit the floor."

In the two decades between Aladdin's release and Williams' death, Weinger said he and his costar only kept in touch when they would see each other at events — and he always remained starstruck by Williams' presence.

"All I can say is that he was a one of a kind person. He was somebody that I was very fortunate to meet," Weinger says. "People ask me all the time, they talk about it like he was this mystical figure, that I was able to meet him and work with him. He's like an old Hollywood legend now. The only word I can say to really describe it is that I was very privileged to have an opportunity, to be in his orbit for a little while and to be associated with him forever thanks to this movie."