‘Do I Even Like Doing This?’ (Exclusive)

Perhaps it’s only fitting that Chauncey Leopardi is still talking about The Sandlot all these years later. After all, the actor tells PEOPLE in a recent exclusive interview, the movie is somewhat timeless.

“It’s one summer, set in 1962, that can live forever,” he muses.

Having risen to fame as Michael “Squints” Palledorous in the 1993 film, Leopardi became near synonymous with the character, a bespectacled smart aleck who nurses a crush on an older lifeguard.

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But there were a slew of other roles, as well — including as Alan White in the 1999 series Freaks and Geeks, a role in Father of the Bride, and guest spots on Boy Meets World, 7th Heaven, and Casper.

Now 44, Leopardi is a father of five who still lives in Los Angeles, but largely stays out of the limelight.

Speaking to PEOPLE, Leopardi says he does still “randomly act here and there,” but is these days, more focused on something else: cannabis.

“It’s definitely my passion. I fell in love with the plant,” he says of his growing operation (which forms the basis of his Squintz cannabis brand).

Acting, meanwhile, was something Leopardi came to almost by accident.

“My first audition was for a commercial in Dallas,” he recounts. “I booked that commercial, did that, and started to get everything in that regional market. Me and my mom then went to LA and started auditioning and never looked back.”

Following the commercials, there was a string of smaller roles in larger projects — like the 1991 film Father of the Bride, in which he played a friend of Matty Banks, played by Kieran Culkin.

“That was a pretty cool picture and a lot of fun,” Leopardi says of the movie.” Plus. Martin Short and Steve Martin have some of the best comedic timing ever.”

It would be two short years later that Leopard would land his role in The Sandlot — a movie filmed over one “incredible summer” summer in Utah, he says.

“We were staying in a condo complex — all the kids and all our families,” Leopardi reminisces. “We had a pool there, we were playing video games. On set there was baseball and a treehouse that was built for the film and it was all incredible. We were working long hours in the heat but at the same time, we had this amazing summer camp experience. It was very fun and pleasurable and it translated to the screen to live forever as this one moment.”

As Leopardi notes, the film wasn’t initially the smash success it later became (it made roughly $35 million, and its budget was $6 million). But once it became viewable at home, everything changed.

“On VHS, it took off and it was just like the biggest thing ever to hit Blockbuster,” he says. “People wore the tapes out and then on DVD it didn’t slow down and it kept getting bigger and bigger.”

He continues: “And now we’re on the fifth generation of fans. The people who went and took their kids to the movie — now their kid’s kids are watching it…it’s somehow still relevant.”

Leopardi attributes at least part of that relevance to the film’s timeless nature — it’s set in the 1960s and shot in a way that feels more sophisticated than some other movies from early 1990s.

“It’s interesting… the writer-director had a bunch of stills from the 1960s and he gave it to director of photography and said, ‘I want it to look like this,’ ” Leopardi explains. “It could have been like every ’90s movie. But The Sandlot still looks good, it still flows good. It’s just a time capsule.”

He adds: “Kids pick it up now and say, ‘This doesn’t look like something my parents watched. We have fans from ages 3 to 80 years old.”

“Being that it’s set during the summertime and in baseball season helps…the merchandise from it is bigger than ever,” he notes.

He and his fellow castmates, he adds, are still close.

“We have multiple group chats. They’re funny, they’ll hit you at random times,” Leopardi says. “Also, we’re together a lot — Sandlot is an interesting project because it hits so many things in the culture — we do big national sports signing and we do pop stuff and comic con type things.”

And while the actors were at one point in talks about a Sandlot spinoff television show, they are now mulling the idea of one day launching a podcast, where they could share their stories as child actors — and secrets from the set.

Leopardi says that one such anecdote is when actor Tom Guiry’s older brother snuck the young actors into a showing of the R-rated film Basic Instinct.

“There was a movie theater across the street of us and we bought tickets for something else and snuck in,” he laughs.

And then there were other on-set moments, like when actor Shane Obedzinski (who played Tommy “Repeat” Timmins) “punched Patrick Renna and they got into some little fight.”

“Patrick then went up to his mom and said, ‘Your son just hit me,’ and she said, ‘Good, you probably deserved it,’ ” Leopardi says. “You get nine rambunctious, 10-14 year-olds…some of us are going at it.”

Leopardi’s own children, however, are unfazed by his role in a film that’s firmly cemented itself as a classic.

“They know Squints is me and it’s like, ‘a thing,’ but none of them really had a Sandlot phase,” he says of his kids.

As for his own childhood, which was largely dominated by filming roles in commercials, television, and movies, Leopardi says he has fond memories but notes how grueling the life of a child actor can be.

“I loved when I was acting but I didn’t necessarily like the business side of Hollywood,” he says. “Who knows what it’s like anymore with streaming and more of a focus on social media but growing up, there were a lot of powerful people in high places that had their sway on who and what was popular, so to speak.”

He continues: “Now, we’re in kind of a different place with streaming and social media where nobody can stop somebody from being famous.”

“The grinding, the auditions and all that…I got to a point where I wondered, ‘Do I even like doing this? is it something I’m truly passionate about?’ ” he says of ultimately leaving Hollywood behind.

Having a life outside of acting, he says, helped.

“I transitioned better than a lot of child actors. I was in the industry but not completely in the industry and I think that definitely helped me balance away from things that happened to some other child stars,” he says.

He continues: “It’s a really weird time change. As a child you can become very popular and successful and normally around age 15 and 16, the business side of things changes.”

And while he largely stays out of the limelight these days, Leopardi admits he does still get recognized.

“Pat [Renna}, who played “Ham” Porter in the film] is so recognizable, people scream at him from cars, says Leopardi. “I can move around pretty easily. For me, it’s like a Superman thing. He takes the glasses off and becomes Superman, I put them on and become Squints.”

He continues: “At the end of the day, it’s something that has given people genuine joy, so I feel like if that’s my life and that character has to be something I have to keep alive, then that’s a blessing. It makes people happy and offered us all tons of core memories.”