20 Wild Horror Movie Casting Choices We Almost Got

The Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter is one of cinema's all-time most statuesque characters, and one so perfectly embodied by Anthony Hopkins - to Oscar-winning success no less - that it's tough to entertain another actor playing this iteration of the cannibal at all.

But before Hopkins was cast, numerous actors were considered for the part, including director Jonathan Demme's first choice Sean Connery, who turned it down, and none other than Al Pacino.

While it's never been revealed precisely how far talks got with Pacino, it's simply wild to consider an actor of his volcanic nature playing Lecter.

After all, by 1991 Pacino was firmly in his hamming-it-up-for-the-cheap-seats era, and his rendition of Lecter would've likely seen him surrender to all of his most outrageous acting excesses, for better or worse.

Pacino would've probably made Hannibal iconic in his own way, but the delicious menace of Hopkins' work is basically peerless, and so it's impossible to lament what even an actor as celebrated as Pacino could've done with it.