Did You Know?

Then Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole's, Washington, D.C. office doubled for that of the F.B.I. director's office in the movie.

A large part of the shoot took place in Pittsburgh. The city was chosen for its variety of landscapes and architecture, which was necessary to portray various parts of the country. Some of the film's interior, including the Baltimore jail scene in the beginning and the ballroom scene of Lecter in his cage, were shot in Soldiers and Sailors Memorial located on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh.

Like Casablanca, this movie contains a famous misquoted line: most people quote Lecter's famous "Good evening, Clarice" as "Hello, Clarice." This is not a misquote from the first movie but an actual quote from the sequel Hannibal. In Hannibal, when Dr. Lecter and Clarice (now played by Julianne Moore) speak on the phone for the first time, he does in fact say "Hello Clarice". This is the origin for the correctly quoted movie line.

Anthony Hopkins described his voice for Hannibal Lecter as, "a combination of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn."

The pattern on the butterfly's back in the movie posters is not the natural pattern of the Death's-Head Hawk Moth. It is, in fact, Salvador Dalí's "In Voluptas Mors", a picture of seven naked women made to look like a human skull.

A 'Bon Appetit' magazine can be seen in Hannibal Lecter's temporary cell.

Almost all the scenes in Hannibal's original cell have either a reflection of Hannibal or Clarice, depending on the camera's point of view.

When Jonathan Demme filmed the scene where Lecter and Starling first meet, Anthony Hopkins said he should look directly at the camera as it panned into his line of sight. He felt Lecter should be portrayed as "knowing everything."

After Lecter was moved from Baltimore, he was originally to be dressed in a yellow or orange jumpsuit, but Anthony Hopkins was able to convince director Jonathan Demme and costume designer Colleen Atwood that it would make the character seem more clinical and unsettling if he was dressed in pure white. Hopkins has since said that this idea came from his fear of dentists.

Brooke Smith (Catherine Martin) and Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill) were actually very close on the set, making Jodie Foster refer to Brooke Smith as Patricia Hearst (meaning a woman that is actually close with her kidnapper).

The filmmakers had completely prepared to go to Montana to shoot a flashback sequence depicting Clarice's runaway attempt. But after filming the dialogue between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, director Jonathan Demme realized it would be pointless to cut away from their performances and announced, "I guess we aren't going to Montana."

The first moth cocoon found in one of the victim's throats was made from a combination of "Tootsie-Rolls" and gummy bears, so that if she swallowed it, it would be edible.

In preparation for his role, Anthony Hopkins studied files of serial killers. Also, he visited prisons and studied convicted murderers and was present during some court hearings concerning serial killings.

When Ted Tally was writing the screenplay for the film, he suggested Jodie Foster for role of Clarice Starling. Foster had been lobbying hard for the part from the start but when Jonathan Demme was hired to direct the film, he felt she was wrong for the part and wanted Michelle Pfeiffer instead. Pfeiffer turned the part down because she felt the film was too violent. Demme then agreed to meet Foster and hired her after only one meeting because he said he could see her strength and determination for the part that he felt was perfect for the character of Clarice.

Jodie Foster spent a great deal of time with FBI agent Mary Ann Krause prior to filming and it was Krause who gave Foster the idea of Starling standing by her car crying. Krause told Foster that at times, the work just became so overbearing that this was a good way to get an emotional release.

The inspiration for the Silence of the Lambs was the real life relationship between University of Washington criminology professor and profiler Robert Keppel and real life serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy helped Keppel in his investigation of the Green River Serial Killings in Washington. While Bundy was executed 24 January 1989, the Green River Killings went unsolved until 2001 when Gary Ridgway was arrested. On 5 November 2003, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder in a King County, Washington (Seattle) courtroom.

In the second draft of Ted Tally's screenplay, the names of three characters had to be changed from Thomas Harris's novel for legal reasons. "Jack Crawford" became "Ray Campbell"; "Frederick Chilton" became "Herbert Prentiss"; and, finally, "Hannibal Lecter" became "Gideon Quinn".

The first film to win the Best Picture Oscar that was widely available on home video at the time of the ceremony.

One of only three films (the others being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) to win the top five Oscars - Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay (Adapted).

The movie's poster was as #16 of "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" by Premiere.

Jodie Foster claims that during the first meeting between Lecter and Starling, Anthony Hopkins's mocking of her southern accent was not rehearsed and that Hopkins improvised it on the spot. Foster's reaction of horror was totally genuine, as she felt personally attacked, though she later thanked Hopkins for generating such an honest reaction.

The real-life FBI's Behavioral Science Unit assisted in the making of this film.

Gene Hackman bought the rights to "The Silence of the Lambs" and was planning to direct the film as well as taking on the role of either Lecter or Jack Crawford, but he withdrew after watching a clip of himself in Mississippi Burning at the The 61st Annual Academy Awards, which made him uneasy about taking more violent roles.

Michael Keaton, Mickey Rourke, and Kenneth Branagh were all considered for the role of Jack Crawford.

Anthony Hopkins has stated that he saw the character of Lecter as similar to HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey; that is to say, a highly complex, highly intelligent, highly logical killing machine who seems to know everything going on around him.

The idea to use glass in Lecter's Baltimore cell as opposed to traditional bars came from production designer Kristi Zea. The idea came about because director Jonathan Demme was unhappy shooting the Lecter scenes through bars, as he felt they negated the sense of intimacy between Lecter and Starling which he was trying to achieve.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR PSYCHO (1960): Has several things in common with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Both Norman Bates and Jame 'Buffalo Bill' Gumb, the killers in both movies, are based on real-life Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Norman Bates enjoyed taxidermy as a hobby and had many stuffed birds around the Bates Motel. When Clarice Starling enters the "Your Self Storage" facility in The Silence of the Lambs, there is a self-conscious nod to this with a shot of a large stuffed bird very similar to the one on Norman's wall. Jonathan Demme uses the same tracking shot that Hitchcock used when Vera Miles is approaching the Bates house on the hill at the end of Psycho (Demme uses it twice in The Silence of the Lambs; when Clarice is approaching her car outside the asylum after her first meeting with Hannibal Lecter and when she goes up to the coffin in the funeral home). The heroines in both movies share their surnames with types of birds; Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)/Lila Crane (Vera Miles) and Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). Julianne Moore went on to play both Lila Crane in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho and Clarice Starling in Hannibal. Anthony Hopkins went on to play director Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock.

Sean Connery was director Jonathan Demme's first choice to play Hannibal Lecter, but he turned the part down. Connery later did a similar serial-killer thriller called Just Cause, where Ed Harris plays a sort of bible-bashing, redneck rip-off of Hannibal Lecter. The film was neither a critical or commercial smash like The Silence of the Lambs was.

When Anthony Hopkins found out that he cast as Hannibal Lecter based on his performance as Dr. Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man he questioned Jonathan Demme and said "But Dr. Treves was a good man." To which Demme replied "So is Lecter, he is a good man too. Just trapped in an insane mind."

According to Jonathan Demme, there were 300 applicants for the role of Clarice Starling.

According to an old news article that Starling reads on microfilm, "Judge Detox" presided over Dr. Lecter's murder trial.

Meg Ryan, Michelle Pfeiffer and Melanie Griffith were all tapped to play Clarice. However, they all turned the role down because of the disturbing subject matter.

Orion's decision to promote this film as a 1991 Oscar contender resulted in having two choose between two other releases later in the year: _Little Man Tate (1991) and Blue Sky. As Orion executives planned to promote Jodie Foster as a Best Actress nominee, they decided to give her some extra exposure by releasing the former picture, which she both appeared in and directed. Foster ended up winning Best Actress. Blue Sky ended up waiting three more years to be released, but when it did, it resulted in Jessica Lange also winning a Best Actress Oscar.

Some of the scenes were filmed in Bellaire, Ohio which coincidentally was the birthplace of actor Ted Levine who played Buffalo Bill in the film.

Director Jonathan Demme, a fan of Deborah Harry, had the props department put a Deborah Harry poster on the wall of one of the victim's homes, shown when Agent Starling is going through her closet and closes the room's door.

Selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in December 2011 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Brooke Smith entered in and out of the pit by crouching through a small door that was half her size. It was then covered with dirt to keep it out of sight of the camera.

George A. Romero:  the bearded man who accompanies Chilton and the two guards who forcibly remove Clarice Starling after her final meeting with Lecter.

Kenneth Utt:  the producer appears as the coroner.

In his first meeting with Clarice Starling, Lecter describes the drawing on his cell wall as "the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere" in Florence, Italy. Lecter's line, in fact, foreshadows Buffalo Bill's location; Starling later finds Buffalo Bill living in Belvedere, Ohio.

The FBI was very impressed by the film's accuracy in depicting criminal investigations, serial killers and their victims. However, they protested against the fact that Clarice discovers Buffalo Bill on her own, since inexperienced agents are never sent out alone on dangerous assignments. When Jonathan Demme explained to them that he wouldn't change it because it would be the psychological climax of the movie, they agreed, saying that it would be the most improbable course of action of all time, never to be repeated again.

The position of Boyle's (Charles Napier's) body after Lecter has disemboweled and hung him from the cell was specifically based on the work of painter Francis Bacon.

The final lines are not delivered by Clarice as she repeats, "Dr. Lecter?... Dr. Lecter?... Dr. Lecter?... Dr. Lecter?", but rather, it is Dr. Chilton who delivers the last dialogue: "Hey, what? Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. Is the security system all set up?....Thank you. I appreciate that."