The star of the classic horror film The Silence of the Lambs says he has come to regret the “unfortunate” way it addressed gender identity.
Ted Levine, who played serial killer Buffalo Bill in the 1991 film starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Saturday that he now believes his character perpetuated harmful stereotypes about trans people.
“It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f---ing wrong. And you can quote me on that,” he said of the character, who murders women to make and wear a “woman suit,”
The actor explained that his perspective changed “Just over time, and having gotten aware and worked with trans folks, and understanding a bit more about the culture and the reality of the meaning of gender.”
“I didn’t play him as being gay or trans,” Levine continued about his breakout role. “I think he was just a f---ed-up heterosexual man. That’s what I was doing.”
Edward Saxon, who produced the film alongside its late director Jonathan Demme, also told the site, “There’s regret, but it didn’t come from any place of malice. It actually came from a place of seeing this guy. We all had dear friends and family who were gay. We thought it would just be very clear that Buffalo Bill adapts different things from society, from a place of an incredibly sick pathology.”
When CBS adapted the story into the TV series Clarice, the reimagining included the casting and consulting of trans actress and activist Jenn Richards to address the film’s impact on the trans community. Richards’ story arc and “identity as a transgender woman prompts her to discuss with Clarice the complicated legacy of Buffalo Bill,” the actress told Pink News in 2021.
Demme, who died in 2017 at age 73, addressed the anti-trans accusations in 2014. “He didn’t wish to be another gender. He didn’t really have a sexual preference. He loathed himself—he wanted to transform himself so that there was no sense of him in the ‘new’ him. Becoming a woman…that was his method of doing it.”
Still, added Levine, “We all know more, and I’m a lot wiser about transgender issues. There are some lines in that script and movie that are unfortunate.”
