8. Jodie Foster/Julianne Moore - Clarice Starling
You have to hand it to Julianne Moore: she has some serious balls. When you consider the fact that she agreed to step into the role that won Jodie Foster some of the highest praise of her career (not to mention an Oscar), you can't help but admire the actress for her gusto. But Foster owned Clarice Starling in the same way that Anthony Hopkins owned Hannibal Lecter. Comparisons were inevitable, but Moore doesn't
quite pull it off. That's not to say she's terrible, or even bad. But secure in the knowledge that
Hannibal is an official sequel to
Silence of the Lambs (Hopkins reprised his role, presumably because it was so much fun), you don't really get the sense that Moore is supposed to be playing the same character. And maybe that's not her fault, exactly: both the script and the movie are far weaker here, so she was going to suffer. Still, Jodie made Clarice feel like a real FBI agent, whereas Moore feels more like an actress pretending to be one.