CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Inspiration Behind Hannibal Lecter Revealed

Was a doctor in a Mexican prison.

Thomas Harris, the author behind one of the best known and most disturbed characters in cinematographic history, has revealed the inspiration that led him to conjure up Hannibal Lecter. Harris was a journalist visiting Nuevo Leon State Prison in Monterrey, Mexico, in the 1960s to interview a mental patient who had killed three people. While there, Harris met a doctor who had saved the patient's life by tending to a gunshot wound and who was also in prison for killing. Harris, who was introduced to the doctor through the prison warden, explains all of this in the introduction to The Silence of the Lambs’ 25th anniversary edition.