Paltrow landed `Hook` role on a drive back home

London: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow got her big break as a young Wendy Darling in Steven Spielberg`s `Hook` during a drive back home.

Spielberg, who had taken Paltrow for a screening of `The Silence Of The Lambs`, says he was driving when he caught Paltrow`s terrified expression in the rear-view mirror as she quizzed him about the film - and knew he`d found the star of his 1991 film, reported Daily Star. "Bruce (Paltrow - Gwyneth`s late father) and Kate (Capshaw - Spielberg`s wife) and I had taken Gwynnie to see The Silence of the Lambs... We were driving back from the movie theatre, and I was going back to work (on Hook) the next day. "I was looking in the rear-view mirror and she was talking about the film and she had this really frightened look on her face, and it suddenly clicked, and I said, `Hey, you could be the young Wendy! You could be the young Maggie Smith`," Spielberg said. PTI