Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster reunite for 30th anniversary of The Silence of the Lambs

Oscar-winning duo Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster reunited on Tuesday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of The Silence of the Lambs happening February 14.

‘It’s a life-changing adventure, that movie, for both of us,’ the 58-year-old Los Angeles native said during a one-hour remote conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors.

‘I’m sure you still get people who come up to you and say, “Would you like a nice Chianti?”‘  

The 83-year-old Welshman replied: ‘Oh yeah, they do.’

Anthony (born Philip) revealed the real-life inspiration behind his iconic character, the incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

‘He’s like a machine. He’s like HAL, the computer in 2001: “Good evening, Dave.” He just comes in like a silent shark,’ Hopkins explained.

‘I remember there was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and his name was Christopher Fettes. He was a movement teacher. He had a cutting voice, and he would slice you to pieces. His analysis of what you were doing was so precise; it’s a method that stayed with me for all my life. 

‘When I was doing it, I thought, “This is Chris Fettes. This is the voice. This man is merciless.” I remember the cage scene, when I said, “No!” Wrong, try it again. That, to anyone, to the observer, the recipient of that, is lethal and charismatic.’

The two-time Emmy winner fondly recalled watching dailies of the scene where Foster’s FBI cadet character Clarice Starling got into a Quantico elevator with her towering male colleagues.

‘I’m like, “This is brilliant, because you are a smaller person in this big, macho male world, coming in as the hero,”‘ Anthony noted.

Jodie (born Alicia) said that uncovering Clarice was mostly about nailing her rural West Virginia accent.

‘She had this quietness. There was almost a shame that she wasn’t bigger, that she wasn’t stronger, this person trying to overcome the failure of the body they were born in,’ the former child star explained.

‘I understood that was her strength. In some ways, she was just like the victims – another girl in another town. The fact that she could relate to those victims made her the hero.’

The critically-acclaimed classic went on to win the big five Academy Awards – best picture, best director (Jonathan Demme), best actor (Hopkins), best actress (Foster), and best adapted screenplay (Ted Tally).

Anthony and Jodie did not address the controversy over Lambs’ problematic portrayal of transfemininity as audiences are meant to recoil from a serial killer creating a woman suit out of skin.   

Back in 1991, LGBT activists protested the movie due to Buffalo Bill aka Jame Gumb (Ted Levine) serving as a violent, mocking distortion of transgender women.

The late filmmaker – who died, age 73, in 2017 – argued that Bill wasn’t trans as Lecter states in the movie: ‘Bill is not a real transsexual. But he thinks he is. He tries to be.’

In the excellent DVD commentary, retired FBI unit chief John E. Douglas explained that Bill was a cross between real-life serial killers Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, and Ed Gein.