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Anthony Hopkins Says The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter Is ‘One of the Best Parts I’ve Ever Read’

Anthony Hopkins tells PEOPLE about receiving the script for the 1991 thriller 'The Silence of the Lambs' and recalls thinking that the role he played, Hannibal Lecter, was 'one of the best parts I've ever read.'

Thirty years after making The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins says Hannibal Lecter is still “one of the best parts I’ve ever read.” Speaking with PEOPLE, the 86-year-old, who won his first Best Actor Oscar for playing the psychiatrist and psychotic cannibal in the 1991 film based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 bestseller, reveals he hasn’t seen the movie in “years.” But he still recalls receiving the script from his agent when he was doing the play M. Butterfly in London: “He said, ‘I want you to read this.’ I said, ‘Is it an offer?’ He said, "It’s a film with Jodie Foster called The Silence of the Lambs.’”

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