Anthony Hopkins won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Hannibal Lecter, even though he's only on screen for a little more than 16 minutes.
Movie news
Great sites
Quotes
Jack Crawford: Starling?
Clarice Starling: Sir?
Jack Crawford: Miggs is dead.
Clarice Starling: Dead? How?
Jack Crawford: Well, the orderly heard Lecter whispering to him all afterrnoon and Miggs crying. They found him at bed check. He swallowed his own tounge.
Mistakes
Many of the vehicles in the movie have Pennsylvania inspection stickers on the lower driver's side windshield. This is not surprising being that most of the movie was filmed in Pennsylvania. However, they should have been removed when the car is suppose to be from another state. For example, the Senator's daughter, just before her abduction in Tennessee, is seen driving a car with Pennsylvania inspection stickers. Also, the driver for Yourself Storage in Baltimore also has Pennsylvania stickers on his car. See more...
Movie Mistakes blog
Popular blog posts:
15 Transformers mistake pictures
15 biggest Harry Potter mistake pictures
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - 14 trivia entries
Directed by Jonathan Demme, starring Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, Anthony Heald (add more)
Anthony Hopkins won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Hannibal Lecter, even though he's only on screen for a little more than 16 minutes.
Buffalo Bill was based on three real serial killers: Ed Gein, who skinned his victims and wore the skin; Ted Bundy, who wore a cast to appear crippled and lure unsuspecting, sympathetic women; Gary Heidnick, a man who kept the women he abducted in a pit in his basement.
In the cage scene, right before Hannibal kills and eats the guards, he tells them to roll up the drawings. When the guard is doing that, look on the table...there's a copy of Bon Appetit magazine.
Author Thomas Harris has never watched the film because he's afraid that it'll influence his writing.
Ever get a weird feeling of nostalgia when you see the other psychopaths in Hannibal's ward? That's because one of them is them is played by Don Brockett (who played Chef Brockett on the children show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" from 1967-1995)).
Michelle Pfeiffer was the first choice for the role of Clarice Starling but declined due to the film's violent subject matter.
During the film's production, while Anthony Hopkins was playing Hannibal Lecter, Brian Cox (who played the character in "Manhunter") was playing King Lear at the National Theater. Ironically, during the production of "Manhunter" five years earlier, Hopkins was playing King Lear at the same theater.
When Anthony Hopkins was preparing to take on the role of Hannibal Lecter, he called Thomas Harris, the author of the Lecter trilogy, and gave him a sample of the Lecter voice. Harris was so frightened by the accuracy of it that he hung up on Hopkins.
Director George A. Romero appears as the bearded man who accompanies Dr. Chilton and two guards to escort Clarice out after she sneaks in to see Dr. Lector.
None of the moths seen in the film are actual Death Head moths. In the interest of avoiding the hassle involved with actually shipping moth eggs over, then halting filming so they could be raised to the proper level of maturity, the production crew simply went with a similar looking domestic breed of moth, and glued false fingernails painted with the trademark skull like visage onto their bodies.
FBI agent John Douglas made Scott Glenn (the actor who plays Jack Crawford) cry, when Glenn was at the Behavioral Sciences Unit (now called Investigative Support Unit) in Quantico, Virginia. He played a tape (sound, not video) of killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris torturing, raping and killing young girls (between 13-18 years old) in the back of their van. Before the encounter, Glenn was firmly against capital punishment.
At one point Brain Cox was asked to reprise his role as Hannibal Lecter but turned it down because he didn't do sequels.
The female dead body in the funeral home was a real actress, not a mannequin. Because the bug cocoon would be placed in her mouth until it is taken out in the middle of the examination, the prop master made the bug cocoon out of a mixture of tootsie rolls and gummie bears. This way if she accidentally swallowed it, it wouldn't do her any harm.
Only the third movie to win all five major Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). The others are "It Happened One Night" (1934) and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975).
You may also like: Seven | The Shawshank Redemption | Scream | Titanic | The Dark Knight
Message boards
No discussions yet
Register as a member to post a message
The message boards are meant for discussing things with other users, rather than making submissions/corrections. By all means feel free to post what you like here, but for anything to be looked at properly and entered into the "official" section please use the "submit something" link in the navigation bar. Any members who post offensive content will have their accounts blocked. This is also not the place to contact Jon (who runs the site (although the members who help him check are a BIG help)) - for that, please use the contact form.