In my books, he's far from that all-powerful wizard. He's a boy who has enormous struggles to learn the basic lessons of wisdom, truth, humility, power and love. Merlin's journey is a metaphor for the hero that's in every one of us. Often even more so. Overcoming fears and doubts and weaknesses is often the hardest part of what a hero has to do.
Modern society seems to be doing a very good job of confusing heroes and celebrities.
A celebrity is someone who is merely famous and whose name or face is well known. Frankly, I don't think that's any big deal. There are a lot of ways to get famous and many of them say absolutely nothing about a person's inner character or wisdom or ability to make a difference to the world. The people I admire are people like Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Edison, Harriet Tubman, who rescued so many slaves. Those people really made a lasting difference in other people's lives.