Actor Austin Butler’s journey from Anaheim to the glittering CGI realms of MTV’s new fantasy series “The Shannara Chronicles” began as star stories so often do – with a 12-year-old Butler in the right place at the right time.

While he was a student at Anaheim’s Twila Reid Elementary School, Butler was at the OC Fair, where his family was approached by a background talent agent. The agent was initially interested in his stepbrother and his wild hair, but Butler tagged along when his family went up to Los Angeles for an audition.

“I was extremely shy, so I was going along for the ride,” recalled Butler, now 24. “They said to my mom, ‘You have another son; have him audition as well.’”

That’s how he started working as an extra, which led to acting roles in tween series (“Hannah Montana,” “Zoey 101”) before he graduated to prime-time with a starring role in the “Sex and the City” prequel “The Carrie Diaries” and now MTV’s 10-episode first season of “The Shannara Chronicles.”

Butler stars in “Shannara,” based on the Terry Brooks fantasy novels, as the half-human, half-elf Wil, who winds up on a quest and starts out with “this very intense loss that he’s dealing with.”

Playing that loss – Wil’s mother died in the pilot that aired earlier this month – hit close to home for Butler, whose mother, Lori Butler, died of cancer not long before he began work on “Shannara.”

“I had trepidation to play the character because I didn’t want to go to that place,” he said.

Butler’s parents divorced when he was 7, and he moved from public school to home-schooling once his acting career began after sixth grade.

“I felt very warm and loved in Orange County,” he said. “It was a great place to grow up and to feel very accepted. And there was a lot of diversity at my school so I got to meet people from all walks of life, different races and economic classes, and that was a great thing to grow up around.”

Although he now calls Los Angeles home, Butler tries to make it back to Orange County for the same reason so many others do: to visit Disneyland.

“I was born not too far from there and I was homeschooled for preschool and have vivid memories of my mom saying, ‘Instead of doing schoolwork, let’s just go to Disneyland,’” he said. “I have such happy memories of that place.”

Butler said acting was never on his radar as a child, but that looking back he can see why it held appeal once he jumped into the industry.

“The only time I came out of my shell was when I was playing pretend,” he said. “I would pretend to be an old man and dress up as an old man and got makeup on myself at age 10, and go with my mom to the mall and try to pass as an old person. Things like that were very strange, but it was my way of expressing myself and it’s the only time I felt really like I wasn’t shy.”

Nowadays he’s pretending for his career, work that’s taken him to New Zealand twice, first to film the 2009 movie “Aliens in the Attic” and last year for “Shannara.”

“Shannara” executive producer Al Gough (“Smallville”) said he was a fan of Butler’s work on “The Carrie Diaries.”

“He had this incredible empathy in addition to being incredibly good-looking, and you don’t usually find that combination,” Gough said.

Butler grew his hair long for the first time to play Wil and goes through 45 minutes in makeup to have pointy elf ears applied before each day of filming.

Having long hair “was a new thing that worked for the part,” he said. “Some days I like it; other days I just want to chop it all off. Sometimes I miss the ease of having short hair, but when I’m feeling shy, having long hair allows me to feel like I’m protected, like I have a cloak on my head.”