Anthony Hopkins made everyone’s skin crawl a little with his terrifying acting as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. But to everyone’s surprise, there was someone on the set that the actor was scared of. Well, both the actors were scared of each other and hence the two never talked to each other off-camera.
Who was the terrifying co-star? Jodie Foster. The actress played the role of Clarice Starling in the movie, an FBI Agent investigating the case of the serial killer who was targeting females in the city. The movie, The Silence of the Lambs, is often credited for pioneering and popularizing movies on the theme of psycho serial killers.
Anthony Hopkins was terrified of Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins played the two lead roles in The Silence of the Lambs. Both the characters, Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, are at the center of the plot. But for the two lead stars to never talk to each other off-screen surely comes as a surprise. The reason behind it is even more surprising, both of them were terrified of each other.
In an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Jodie Foster confessed to the TV show host, that she avoided her co-star off-screen, which he seemed to have noticed. The actress narrated the incident that followed after the filming of the classic movie had wrapped up. She shared with the host and other guest,
“I was eating a tuna fish sandwich. It was the last day and he came up to me and… I don’t know, I sort of had a tear in my eye. I was like, ‘I was really scared of you!’ And he said, ‘I was scared of you!’ [And] I think it’s funny, because why would anyone be scared of me?”
Along with Jodie Foster, the host Graham Norton was stunned to hear that Anthony Hopkins, who pulled off a character like Hannibal Lecter without breaking a sweat, was scared of Jodie Foster, who was a young actress at the time.
Jodie Foster used to avoid Anthony Hopkins
As the fear was a mutual feeling between the two co-stars, Jodie Foster shared how she used to avoid the MCU actor as soon as the shooting stopped. Graham Norton was surprised to hear that Jodie Foster could go on for days without even talking to a star like Anthony Hopkins. But the actress’s side of the story is fair too, as watching him play the psycho character right in front of her eyes might be a hundred times creepier than watching it onscreen.
She explained,
“The first day we had like a little read-through and I got there early, and then I went to the bathroom and I came back. Everybody was sitting down. We did the read-through of the film. And by the end of it, I never wanted to talk to him again. I was petrified!”
“And so then we did the whole movie, he was always behind the glass partitions or he was in his cell. And we got to the end of the movie and really had never had a conversation.”
Despite fearing each other, the two actors managed to ace their roles in The Silence of the Lambs. The two even won Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively. In fact, the movie was the third movie in history to win the “Big Five” Academy Awards.
Source: The Graham Norton Show
