Charlie Korsmo, Child Star of ‘Hook,’ Now Professor at Case Law School

• Korsmo and Dustin Hoffman in 1991’s ‘Hook’

Charlie Korsmo, sweet little Charlie Korsmo, the impressionable, bird-faced Jackie Banning of Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Robin Williams’ vehicle “Hook,” is now a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. Go figure.

Korsmo, whose Hollywood credits include Dick Tracy and the 1998 high-school party flick Can’t Hardly Wait, went to MIT and Yale Law School after an on-again, off-again child acting career.

He’s now in Cleveland, which he purports to love for “the people,” and is making an appearance at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque Friday evening for a Q&A session after a screening of the 1990 film “Men Don’t Leave” in which he starred alongside Jessica Lange and Chris O’Donnell.

Here’s Korsmo, from an interviews with Case’s law newspaper The Docket, about how acting has influenced his legal career:

It is really helpful to have a bit of a performance background as a lawyer, at least in theory. It helps because you don’t get stage fright, and it’s much easier to be persuasive in a real manner. And, as a professor, it’s kind of like giving a live theatrical performance four times a week. I get to write my own script, but you never know what people are going to ask. So really, it’s more like improv theatre.

And here he is, all grown up, ready to teach Corporate Law in the spring:

No word, yet, on whether Rufio (Dante Basco) has accepted a tenure-track position at CSU.

This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2014.