Anthony Hopkins Remembers Why He Stopped Reading The Silence of the Lambs Script

With another spooky season come and gone, there’s now been a whole new generation of people who have discovered The Silence of the Lambs for the first time. For more than 30 years, Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel has remained a favorite thanks to its incredible filmmaking and powerful performances by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster .

In his new memoir We Did OK, Kid , excerpted in the Times , Hopkins recalls his first encounter with Hannibal Lecter and The Silence of the Lambs —an encounter he couldn’t get through without stopping to take a breather. His London agent sent him a script for “kind of a film script” with a part called “Lecter.” Hopkins remember that “within a half an hour, the script arrived. I made a cup of tea and sat down to read.