Orion Pictures/PA ImagesEveryone remembers Sir Anthony Hopkins’ fava beans appetite in The Silence of the Lambs. But Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling was the real icon – and her TV counterpart has finally been cast.
Foster’s tenacious, no-frills performance as the FBI agent on Buffalo Bill’s trail is nothing short of legendary, going toe-to-toe with Hopkins’ insatiably creepy Hannibal Lecter with ease.
The 1991 movie, based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel of the same name, is now getting a follow-up in the form of a CBS television drama. The show, aptly titled Clarice, will follow the agent a year after the events of the movie, in which Hopkins’ intelligent cannibal helped her catch a killer prone to skinning his victims. In the drama, we’ll see Clarice as she returns to her day job, witnessing her psychological journey after a difficult upbringing.
PA ImagesNow, it’s been announced Pretty Little Liars and Home and Away star Rebecca Breeds will be taking on the role of Clarice.
The project was only announced in January this year, with few other details known about casting and story points. Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet have been brought on as showrunners (the former worked on Mission: Impossible III, Watchmen and Star Trek, the latter worked on Rachel Getting Married and The Mummy).
Orion PicturesShortly after news of Clarice broke, the pair released a statement, which read:
After more than 20 years of silence, we’re privileged to give voice to one of America’s most enduring heroes – Clarice Starling. Clarice’s bravery and complexity have always lit the way, even as her personal story remained in the dark. But hers is the very story we need today: her struggle, her resilience, her victory. Her time is now, and always.
Breeds is the third actress to play the character after Foster’s Oscar-winning performance in 1991 and Julianne Moore’s turn in the 2001 sequel Hannibal.
Universal PicturesHowever, the cannibal himself has lived through several iterations. Hopkins wasn’t even the first actor to play him – that honour goes to Brian Cox in Michael Mann’s 1986 thriller Manhunter.
Hopkins would go on to play Hannibal in three films: The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon (that series would get a later prequel, Hannibal Rising in 2007, which featured a completely different cast). Of late, the most recent actor to play him was Mads Mikkelsen in NBC’s cult-favourite Hannibal TV show, which ran for three seasons before its controversial cancellation.
There is no current release date for Clarice.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.