20 Trivia Facts About 'The Silence of the Lambs', Now On Netflix

Image via Orion Pictures

The movie is based on the book The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris. It is the second of four Harris books featuring Hannibal Lecter as a main character. The first is Red Dragon, which pairs Hannibal with William Graham, the man who captured him; the third is Hannibal, which follows Clarice and Hannibal seven years after the events of Lambs; and the fourth is Hannibal Rising, which follows Hannibal's childhood. All four books have since been adapted to film, three of which star Anthony Hopkins as the main character.

Throughout the movie, men consistently underestimate or objectify Clarice, and the filmmakers do an excellent job of communicating her discomfort and vulnerability via camera angles. This elevator scene, where Clarice is framed to be shorter than everyone around her, is one of several good examples.

Clarice graduated from the University of Virginia, and her education comes up three times during the movie. FBI Agent Jack Crawford mentions how Clarice grilled him when he lectured there. She tells Dr. Chilton that she graduated from the University of Virginia, and that it's not a "charm school." And lastly, when she catches the news report on the latest Buffalo Bill kidnapping, she has a UVA messenger bag slung over her right shoulder.

UVA consistently ranks as one of the top 5 public American universities. Its alumni include poet Edgar Allan Poe, NBA All-Star Ralph Sampson, writer/comedian Tina Fey, and news anchor Katie Couric.

Dr. Chilton tells Clarice that when Hannibal attacked a nurse, "His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue." The average resting human heart rate is anywhere from 60 to 100 beats per minute. Later, when Hannibal escapes his cage by pretending to be a wounded police officer, you can hear the ambulance EMT saying that his pulse is 90. Nothing rattles this man.

You'll notice that throughout the movie, Hannibal rarely blinks. This was a deliberate decision by actor Anthony Hopkins, who was inspired by crocodiles and tarantulas during his preparation for the role.

"It's not so much not blinking, it's just being still," said Hopkins in a 2001 interview with Barbara Walters. "Stillness has an economy and it has a power about it."

Hannibal has drawings of "the Duomo seen from from the Belvedere" in his cell. This foreshadows where Hannibal eventually resettles—in Florence, Italy—after escaping from prison. The novel and film adaptation of Hannibal cover his time there.

Hopkins made an improvised decision to make fun of Clarice's West Virginia accent, which genuinely upset her actress, Jodie Foster, according to an interview on the special edition DVD: "He started imitating my accent," said Foster. "He would say, ‘Your problem, Clarice, is you need to get a little more fuhn out of life.’ And suddenly, I just—It upset me so much! It, like, struck a really bad chord in me."

There's a Reddit thread that hypothesizes Hannibal was making a medical joke when he said, "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." Liver, fava beans, and wine are all inhibitors of monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which were used to treat psychiatric disorders.

Anthony Hopkins was not the first choice for the role. Sean Connery was offered the role first, but he turned it down because he found the script to be distasteful. Had Hopkins turned down the role, John Lithgow would have played the serial killer. Years later, Lithgow would play the Trinity serial killer in the fourth season of Dexter.

One common characteristic of Buffalo Bill's victims is they were all overweight; that made them easier to skin. To prepare for her role as Buffalo Bill victim Catherine Martin, actress Brooke Smith gained 25 pounds.

Buffalo Bill used a ploy to lure Catherine into his truck; he wrapped his arm in a cast so she wouldn't feel threatened. This was also the modus operandi of real-life serial killer Ted Bundy, who would use fake injuries to bait his victims and provoke their sympathy. Bundy killed over 30 women and girls and was executed in 1989, two years before The Silence of the Lambs was released.

Buffalo Bill planned to use the girls' skins to make a "woman suit" for himself. Real-life serial killer Ed Gein also fashioned women's corpses into clothing, furniture, and various keepsakes. One of the items found in his house, following his arrest, was a corset made out of female human skin.

When the officers pull Clarice away from Hannibal in Memphis, you can see a bearded man in the background with a suit and tie. This is filmmaker George Romero, most famous for his classic zombie films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.

During the scene where Hannibal lures the two police officers into his cage, you can see a copy of Bon Appétit magazine on his table—a darkly humorous reference to his cannibalistic ways.

The runtime of the movie is two hours and 18 minutes. In his performance as Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins appears on screen for a little over 16 minutes—a testament to how magnetic and memorable Hopkins was in his role.

When the Memphis police are hunting for Lesnar following his escape, you get a cameo from Ted Tally, who wrote the film's script.

Buffalo Bill dances to the song "Goodbye Horses." It is sung by Q Lazzarus, a reclusive singer who disappeared from public view shortly after the release of the movie. For some time, film fans speculated that she was dead. She was discovered to be alive and well in 2018, working as a bus driver in Staten Island.

The infamous dance, where Buffalo Bill dances naked in front of his mirror with his penis tucked between his legs, was not in the script, although there was a version of the scene in the novel. Ted Levine, the actor who played Buffalo Bill, devised the scene with director Jonathan Demme; he felt it gave his character some needed depth and accessibility.

The director, Jonathan Demme, makes a cameo at the very end of the movie, when Hannibal disappears into the crowd. He's the man in the blue baseball hat, circled above.

The Silence of the Lambs is one of three films in history to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally), Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), and Best Actress (Jodie Foster). The other two films to accomplish this feat were It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).