10 Times Actors Went Too Far (And Improved Movie Scenes)
6. Anthony Hopkins - The Silence Of The Lambs
Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 masterpiece Silence of the Lambs won him an Academy Award and heaps upon heaps of praise. He was in the film for a mere 16 minutes of screen time, and within this short time frame he gave audiences one of the most terrifying villains in cinema... and numerous sleepless nights.
During the scene in which he talks to Special Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, who also took home a well-deserved Oscar) about eating human liver with "fava beans and a nice Chianti", Lecter gives audiences a skin crawling hiss. Aimed almost right at the camera, it goes through you like butter through a knife and has become one of the cannibal doctor's most iconic moments.
As it turns out, though, the hiss wasn't rehearsed. Rather, it was a noise Hopkins made behind the scenes to scare Foster between takes, and he figured using it in the scene would elicit a similar mortified response in Foster's special agent. Which, of course, it did, the look on her face as genuine and one-off as possible.
Director Jonathan Demme liked it so much he decided to keep it in. Clearly, if a hiss from Hopkins could scare Foster, it could scare his audience, too.