Casting type in generic method

I need to make this class as generic as possible... I want to pass a XML string Path and return the data of the type of object I pass to the getDataFromFile() Method. Here's what I made so far:

public class XmlFile
{
    public string mXmlFilePath { get; set; }

    public XmlFile(string xmlFilePath)
    {
        this.mXmlFilePath = xmlFilePath;
    }

    public object getDataFromFile(object dataObject)
    {
        LogFile.addLogEntry("Getting data from XML file.");

        object data = null;
        Type type = dataObject.GetType();

        try
        {

            StreamReader xmlStream = new StreamReader(this.mXmlFilePath);
            XmlSerializer xmlfile = new XmlSerializer(type);
            data = (type)xmlfile.Deserialize(xmlStream);
            xmlStream.Close();
            return data;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            LogFile.addLogEntry("Error reading data from XML file: " + ex.Message);
            return null;
        }         
    }
}

I know I should be using reflection, but I'm having trouble making this cast data = (type)xmlfile.Deserialize(xmlStream);

thank you...