The adaptation of Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs accomplished the impressive feat of earning all five of the Academy Awards’ top honors, though original plans for the project looked a lot different, which included considering Michelle Pfeiffer for the role of Clarice Starling. Making its accomplishments even more impressive is the fact that it took home the ceremony’s most esteemed awards while also being an unsettling horror movie, with Pfeiffer recently detailing it was the story’s disturbing subject matter that prevented her from getting involved. Ultimately, the only real regret that Pfeiffer had about passing on the “evil” role was that she wouldn’t get the chance to collaborate with director Jonathan Demme an additional time before his passing in 2017.
“With The Silence of the Lambs, I was trepidatious. There was such evil in that film,” Pfeiffer detailed to The New Yorker. “The thing I most regret is missing the opportunity to do another film with Jonathan. It was that evil won in the end, that at the end of that film evil ruled out. I was uncomfortable with that ending. I didn’t want to put that out into the world.”
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In the film, Starling manages to capture the killer “Buffalo Bill,” but in the process, the villainous Hannibal Lecter escaped imprisonment to make the warden who tortured him pay for his treachery. Despite one killer’s apprehension, the escape of another ruthless killer concluded the experience in a disturbing fashion.
Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance as Lecter, while Jodie Foster won an Oscar for her performance as Starling. Despite Hopkins having years more experience than Foster, he recently detailed how he was nervous to work with her, as she had just won an Oscar for her performance in The Accused.
“I couldn’t believe my luck, and I was scared to speak to you,” Hopkins revealed to Foster during a video chat hosted by Variety. “I thought, ‘She just won an Oscar.’”
Hopkins continued, “I was naturally nervous, an Englishman — a limey like me, a Welshman — playing an American serial killer. And I remember [director] Jonathan [Demme], when the camera picked me up, he said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s it. Hopkins. You’re so weird!’ And I said, ‘Why, thank you.’ And they wanted the lighting girl to come into my cell, and I said, ‘What are you doing in my cell?’ And [Jonathan] said, ‘Oh, my God.’ So I knew I had pressed the right button. Once you got that button, hold on to it — and go with it.”
A The Silence of the Lambs sequel TV series, Clarice, will debut on CBS on February 11th.
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