The Casting Choices That Almost Changed Movies As We Know Them

Before the glass cell, the quiet voice, and that unnerving stillness, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) belonged briefly to a very different possibility. Gene Hackman was involved with the rights and was connected to directing and potentially starring, but the darkness of the material eventually pushed him away. That is not hard to understand. The story is a brilliant thriller, but it asks anyone handling it to live with cruelty, fear, and psychological ugliness for a long time. Hopkins made Lecter almost motionless, speaking with chilling courtesy, as if terror could arrive perfectly dressed and seated upright.