CNN.com - Former 'Sounder' star revisits past

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Tender Hooks

(PEOPLE) -- In 1972, Kevin Hooks was a 14-year-old actor making his first big movie, "Sounder," and learning some cruel realities.

After checking in a hotel near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with the crew, he put on swim trunks and jumped into the pool, which was crowded with white children. "I swam from one end to the other," he says. "I saw kids trying to get out, parents pulling their kids out. I thought, 'What the hell is going on?' And I got midway, and it hit me."

Thirty years later, after establishing himself as a director with such series as "St. Elsewhere," "ER" and "Philly," he retains indelible memories of "Sounder" and its making. The Depression-era tale of a black sharecropper family trying to hang on after the father is arrested for stealing a ham earned Oscar nominations for Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield, and Hooks was nominated for a Golden Globe. "It all still resonates," said Hooks, now 44. "I wanted to re-experience it."

He got his wish directing the remake for ABC's "Wonderful World of Disney." To Winfield, returning in the role of a teacher, Hooks "looks the same -- the same bright boy, just smarter. He knows how to tell a story."

Married to Cheryl, 44, a media consultant, and the father of three, Hooks, son of actor Robert Hooks, 65, and retired state worker Yvonne Hickman, 63, still has the tattered script he used 30 years ago. "This is the only thing I kept from the original," he says. "I want to have the original and the new script bound together."