3. Anthony Hopkins Never Blinks During The Silence of the Lambs
In a recent article, I wrote that child actor Haley Joel Osment (he will always be a child actor - don't deny it) successfully managed to avoid blinking for the entirety of Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence. As far as I can tell from multiple viewings of the movie, and various online sources, such a thing is true: he really pulled it off. But there's another movie out there which supposedly boasts a similar performance: Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme's masterful psychological thriller The Silence of Lambs. Scout the internet and you'll find all kinds of sites telling you that Hopkins does, in fact, make it all the way through the film without blinking his eyelids. And if you haven't watched Silence of the Lambs in a while, I suppose there's no reason as to why you wouldn't believe such a thing - that was one of his trademark features, right? Well, yes, it was supposed to be according to the actor himself, but Hopkins does - in actuality - blink
at least fifteen times throughout the movie. Another "fact" with no real factual basis, then, and I'm blinkin' angry about it (sorry).