Actor NICOLAS CAGE will never forget one Christmas gift he received as a child, because it stimulated his imagination for the rest of the following year.

Cage's father bought the young star a Pinocchio toy from Italy and the actor played with it so much, the boy puppet's head fell off.

Cage recalls, "It was a little toy car being driven by Pinocchio. For whatever the reason Pinocchio's head fell off because I played with it a little too roughly and my father picked up the head and he went into the garden and he planted it. "The next morning was an enormous thing that had grown in the garden and I ripped it open and it was a giant wooden Pinocchio. "I was scratching my head trying to figure out how that grew. Then I started planting everything. I planted all my hot wheels. I had a little G.I. Joe slipper and I thought if I planted that, it would grow really big and I could put my sleeping bag in it. "My father really got me thinking in an imaginative way at a young age. Hands down, that was the best Christmas present I ever got because it was a tool to stimulate my imagination."