The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally, adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel.

It stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer named "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who skins his female victims.

To catch him, she seeks the advice of the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer.

It became the third and most recent film (the other two being 1934's It Happened One Night and 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) to win Academy Awards in the five major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee, is assigned by her boss, Jack Crawford, to interview the incarcerated Hannibal Lecter, a highly intelligent former psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer.

Crawford secretly hopes to gain insights into a psychopathic serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill", who kills overweight women and skins them.

The man is linked to Buffalo Bill, and Lecter offers to profile the killer on the condition that he is transferred away from Dr. Frederick Chilton, whom he detests.

Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fake deal, promising a prison transfer if he helps them capture Buffalo Bill in time to rescue Catherine.

Instead, Lecter demands a quid pro quo, offering clues in exchange for personal information about Starling, to which she agrees and reveals that her father, a police officer, was murdered when she was a child.

Lecter agrees and is flown to Memphis, where he provides Senator Martin with accurate information on Buffalo Bill's appearance but falsely identifies him as "Louis Friend".

She visits Lecter, now imprisoned in Tennessee, and recounts a traumatic childhood incident in which she heard lambs screaming as they were slaughtered in a barn but was unable to save them.

[9] Some gay male critics and feminists felt that the film's portrayal of Buffalo Bill negatively associated the LGBT community with deviance, psychopathy, and violence.

[11] Director Jonathan Demme argued that this criticism was misguided, telling The New York Times that "I got all this unfounded abuse... [Buffalo Bill] wasn't a gay character.

[12] In a 1992 interview with Playboy magazine, the feminist and women's rights advocate Betty Friedan stated: "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that The Silence of the Lambs won four [sic] Oscars.

However, Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy encouraged Tally to keep writing as the studio took care of financing and searched for a replacement director.

[25][26] Having just collaborated on Married to the Mob (1988), Demme's first choice for the role of Starling was Michelle Pfeiffer, who turned it down, later saying, "It was a difficult decision, but I got nervous about the subject matter.

The studio was skeptical about Laura Dern as a bankable choice,[28] so Foster was ultimately awarded the role due to her passion for the character.

[32] Other actors considered for the role included Al Pacino,[33] Robert De Niro,[33] Dustin Hoffman,[33] Derek Jacobi[34] and Daniel Day-Lewis.

[35] Hopkins developed his portrayal of Lecter by drawing inspiration from the HAL 9000 computer as voiced by Douglas Rain in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as the vocal patterns of writer Truman Capote.

[36][37][better source needed] In a 2001 interview with GQ, Hopkins clarified that he did not base Lecter's vocal cadence on Katharine Hepburn, as some people had believed.

[32] Gene Hackman was cast to play Jack Crawford, the Agent-in-Charge of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, but he found the script too violent.

Douglas gave Glenn a tour of the Quantico facility and also played for him an audio tape containing various recordings that serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris had made of themselves raping and torturing a 16-year-old girl.

This includes British post-punk music, such as the song "Hip Priest" by the Fall which can be heard playing during the climactic scene in which Starling enters Buffalo Bill's house.

[58] The song "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus became a cult hit after it was featured in an iconic scene with Buffalo Bill applying makeup and speaking to himself in the mirror.

[59] The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, grossing almost $14 million from 1,497 theaters over the 4-day Presidents' Day weekend, placing at number one at the US box office.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Director Jonathan Demme's smart, taut thriller teeters on the edge between psychological study and all-out horror, and benefits greatly from stellar performances by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster.

[69] However, the film is also notable for being one of two multi-Academy Award winners (the other being Unforgiven) to get a bad review from Ebert's colleague, Gene Siskel.

[71] It was also nominated for Best Sound (Tom Fleischman and Christopher Newman) and Best Film Editing (Craig McKay), but lost to Terminator 2: Judgment Day and JFK, respectively.

[91] According to The Guardian, before The Silence of the Lambs, serial killers in film had been "claw-handed bogeymen with melty faces and rubber masks.

[92] However, the BBFC's Craig Lapper felt that audiences had instead become used to procedural crime dramas with serial killers as dramatic tropes, and suggested that The Silence of the Lambs had created interest in these themes.