10 Movie Characters Who Were Perfectly Cast (The Second Time)

1. Hannibal Lecter - Anthony Hopkins (The Silence Of The Lambs)

The Original

Hannibal Lecter's debut may be wrongly remembered as that menacing sequence in The Silence Of The Lambs where he meets Jodie Foster's Agent Starling, but the character already had one film under his belt by then.

The man-eating doctor actually appeared first in Michael Mann's Manhunter in 1986 and was played by Brian Cox who channelled Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel. It's a good performance in a film that went from being divisive on its release to being legitimately adored more recently.

Second Time's The Charm...

But it's not Anthony Hopkins' performance, which makes it inferior. From the moment the almost alien Lecter appears behind his thick plate glass prison, he's spell-binding and builds such an immediate mythology that people have sought to find out quite how he's so effective and affecting.

While that has sometimes strayed into the realms of fallacy - like the suggestion that he never blinks - the real reasons come down to Hopkins' performance choices. He seems to always be slightly uneasy with his outward projected identity, as if he's wearing someone else's skin, and there's an uneasy calm to his voice that belies the violence beneath. And then there's his eyes, which are so cold and irresistible that you'd think he was cast on them alone.

Which of these performances do you like best? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.