A box office bomb turned beloved cult classic, Steven Spielberg’s 1991 fantasy Hook revealed the future of eternal child Peter Pan, who leaves Neverland, grows up, forgets his past, and becomes a boring adult (Robin Williams). Peter Banning is pulled back into the magic when his young children are kidnapped by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), who’s still out for revenge.
The elaborately imagined film features early appearances from Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell and Gwyneth Paltrow as young Wendy, and it and produced a catchphrase so iconic—Lost Boy leader Rufio’s (Dante Basco) war cry “Bangarang”—that it inspired a hit dubstep track. But what ever happened to the children who set the plot in motion, Peter’s kids, played by Charlie Korsmo (Jack) and Amber Scott (Maggie)? Both of the actors who brought them to life basically retired from Hollywood after the film’s release. Keep reading to find out what happened to them next, and where they are now, at 44 and 37.
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Neither Korsmo nor Scott opted to pick up their acting careers after Hook. Although there’s little information on why Scott never appeared on screen again after her rendition of the film’s song “When You’re Alone” at the 64th Annual Academy Awards, Korsmo has stated that he was ready to get back to a normal life after working steadily in films including What About Bob? and Dick Tracy from ages 10 to 13.
“I hadn’t been to school in three or four years and I started to realize: I don’t have any friends my own age, I don’t have any new experience of normal life from the past four years,” he said in a 2017 interview with onscreen mom, Caroline Goodall. “I decided I wanted to go to high school.”
Korsmo briefly tested the waters again during his sophomore year of college, memorably singing “Paradise City” as nerdy William Lichter in the 1998 high school party movie Can’t Hardly Wait, before deciding to pursue other endeavors permanently.
Both Scott and Korsmo opted to study at prestigious East Coast institutions. Scott attended Trinity College in Connecticut, graduating in 2005 at the age of 20 with a degree in political science focusing on international relations.
The son of John T. Korsmo, an attorney, politician and former Chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board under George W. Bush, and Dr. Deborah Ruf, an educational psychologist and writer specializing in people of high intelligence, young Korsmo studied college-level mathematics during the filming of Hook and becoming a two-time Minnesota State Math League Champion.
According to his resume, he went on to study physics at MIT, graduating in 2000 with a thesis entitled “Possible Forms and Probable Consequences of a Time-Dependent Cosmological ‘Constant.'” Korsmo then moved to Washington D.C. to work as a special assistant at the Environmental Protection Agency and then in policy with House Republicans, before attending law school at Yale, where he was a member of the conservative and libertarian Federalist Society.
Upon graduating with his J.D. in 2006, Korsmo spent a year clerking for the late Judge Ralph K. Winter, United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit, before spending two years as an associate for the prestigious New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. The former child star then turned his focus to academia in 2009 as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn School of Law. He later joined Cleveland’s Case Western University School of Law, becoming full professor in 2017.
Taking after his onscreen corporate lawyer dad Peter (minus the billable hours), Korsmo, now 44, focuses on corporate and banking law. He and his wife Adrienne have a son and daughter.
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Entertainment sites went aflutter when a new headshot of Scott surfaced on IMDB in 2015. Although no new acting credits followed, she did go on to be credited in 2019 as a producer on the short film Cannonball, a dark comedy from the festival circuit that she also cast and set designed.
Although the 37-year-old has stayed out of the limelight since acting in Hook, some information on Scott’s ambitions is available via a profile from the 2019 Blue Cat Screenplay Competition. In the submission for her short screenplay Sunshine, focusing on an elderly dementia patient and her caregiver, the former actor details briefly working for The New York Times after college before moving to Los Angeles to pursue creative endeavors. She also discusses working on four projects: “a female-driven comedic feature about a hacker who gets revenge on her ex, a full season of a dramedy series on nurses in the Vietnam War, and two shorts.”
Meanwhile, Korsmo returned to the screen to play the Werner Herzog-esque role of Herr Director in the indie movie Chained for Life in 2018. “An old friend of mine who’s now an independent filmmaker made a very small budget movie a few years ago and asked me to play a small role in it,” he explained in a 2021 interview. As for future roles? “I don’t really see it happening,” Korsmo said.