Both Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins grabbed Oscars for their respective roles as Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The film also won Best Picture and made $270 million at the box office worldwide. Foster revealed that she avoided Hopkins for most of the filming because she was afraid of him.

Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs | Credits: Orion Pictures

Foster explained that most of their scenes were shot with glass partitions in between them. It was this dynamic between the actors that reflected in the film and fans loved it. The scenes between Hopkins and Foster were dramatically new for the viewers at the time.

Jodie Foster avoided Anthony Hopkins for most of the filming of The Silence of the Lambs

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in a still from The Silence of the Lambs | Credits: Orion Pictures

Jodie Foster played a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill. She seeks help from another cannibalistic serial killer in jail, Hannibal Lecter, to catch Bill. Anthony Hopkins, who played Lecter, managed to scare the audiences with his performance. Even Foster admitted that she was afraid of the star during the filming of their movie.

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show, Foster told Norton and his guests that she avoided her co-star on the movie set. When Norton asked her whether it was true that she never spoke to Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, she shared, “Nope, never spoke to him. He was scary!”

Foster told the viewers that they were separated by glass partitions and jail cells, never having a chance to have a conversation. When Norton further pressed why she did not talk to him backstage, she shared that she tried to avoid him because she was afraid of him. She shared:

We got to the end of the movie and had never really had a conversation. I avoided him as much as I could. I really avoided him.

Hopkins eventually approached her on the last day of the shoot intending to speak with her. Foster recalled that she sort of had a tear in her eye and told him that she was scared of him. She got a surprising response from the legendary actor. Foster shared:

He came up to me… I sort of had a tear in my eye and I was like, ‘I was really scared of you.’ And he said, ‘I was scared of you!’

The film went on to win five major Academy Awards including Best Actor and Actress for Foster and Hopkins, Best Director for Jonathan Demme, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. A sequel and two prequel films were released from the series, but Foster chose not to return to her role.

Why did Jodie Foster decide not to return to The Silence of the Lambs sequel?

Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs | Credits: Orion Pictures

After her Oscar win for the role, Jodie Foster initially expressed interest in returning to a sequel film. However, after reading the manuscript of Thomas Harris’ sequel novel, Foster decided not to return. It wasn’t just Foster who had reservations about the novel’s excessive violent content.

Director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally also declined to return to a sequel. In December 1999, Foster issued a statement saying that she did not want to play the new story arc of Clarice Starling in the sequel. She mentioned that it gave some “negative attributes” to her character, thus “betraying” the arc established in her 1991 film (via BBC).

Foster clarified in a 2005 interview with Total Film that she and Demme didn’t wish to trample on Agent Starling. She told Total Film:

The official reason I didn’t do Hannibal is I was doing another movie, Flora Plum. So I get to say, in a nice dignified way, that I wasn’t available when that movie was being shot … Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I, she really did, and I know it sounds kind of strange to say but there was no way that either of us could really trample on her.

The official reason for her absence in the sequel was cited as her other film, Flora Plum. Julianne Moore replaced Foster in the role of Clarice in Hannibal. While Moore delivered a commendable performance, it was deemed inferior to Foster’s performance.