Dr. Hannibal Lecter is the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer created by novelist Thomas Harris. Behind glass or in a restraint mask, he helps FBI agents catch other killers while toying with their minds. Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for playing him in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and in 2003 the American Film Institute named Lecter the greatest villain in American film. He isn’t a monster or a masked slasher, which is exactly why he unsettles: he is cultured, polite and the smartest person in every room.
At a glance
| Franchise | Hannibal Lecter series (Thomas Harris) |
| First appearance | Red Dragon (novel, 1981); first screen appearance in Manhunter (1986) |
| Creator | Thomas Harris |
| Portrayed by | Brian Cox (Manhunter, 1986, spelled “Lecktor”) Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991; Hannibal, 2001; Red Dragon, 2002) Gaspard Ulliel (young adult, Hannibal Rising, 2007) Aaran Thomas (child, Hannibal Rising, 2007) Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, NBC, 2013–2015) |
| Weapon of choice | Psychological manipulation above all; when he kills, blades and his bare hands. He is known for cooking and eating his victims. |
Origin story and backstory
In Harris’s books, Lecter is born in 1933 into a noble Lithuanian family. The prequel Hannibal Rising (2006) explains how he became a killer. In 1944 his parents are killed during the fighting on the Eastern Front, and he and his little sister, Mischa, are captured by a band of deserters who murder her. Traumatized, he ends up in a Soviet orphanage before his uncle and his uncle’s Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki, take him in. As a teenager he kills for the first time, then hunts down the men responsible for Mischa’s death one by one. The novel ends with him accepted to Johns Hopkins Hospital.
As an adult, Lecter becomes a respected Baltimore psychiatrist, a fixture of the city’s social elite, and a killer who prefers to eat the rude. FBI profiler Will Graham eventually catches him, but only after Lecter nearly kills him with a linoleum knife. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, Lecter is locked in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where investigators come to him for help catching other killers.
Where Lecter came from
Harris has said the character grew out of a 1960s interview he did for Argosy magazine at a prison in Monterrey, Mexico. There he met a prison doctor he called “Dr. Salazar,” an elegant man who turned out to be a convicted murderer himself. He is widely believed to be Alfredo Ballà Treviño, a surgeon convicted of murder in 1959. Other writers have pointed to further real influences, but Harris’s own account is the starting point. On screen, the version you get depends on the actor. Brian Cox’s Lecktor appears in only a handful of scenes in Manhunter. Hopkins played him “ultra sane, very still,” and has said the computer HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey was an influence. Mads Mikkelsen, by Bryan Fuller’s account, approached him almost as a fallen angel.
Iconic moments
- First meeting (1991): FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) walks down a long, dim corridor to Lecter’s glass cell, where he stands waiting, perfectly still.
- “Fava beans and a nice Chianti” (1991): Lecter tells Clarice that a census taker once tried to test him, and that he ate the man’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti. In the novel, the wine is “a big Amarone” instead.
- Quid pro quo: Lecter trades clues about the killer Buffalo Bill for Clarice’s memories of her childhood, an exchange that drives The Silence of the Lambs.
- The mask: Strapped to a hand truck in a restraint mask for his transfer, he became one of the most copied images in horror.
- The escape (1991): In Memphis, Lecter breaks free from his guards and slips past the police in disguise. The film handles the violence mostly off-screen and by suggestion.
- The last phone call (1991): Lecter calls Clarice from abroad, says he is “having an old friend for dinner,” and walks off into the crowd after his old jailer, Dr. Chilton.
Appearances
Novels
- Red Dragon (1981)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1988)
- Hannibal (1999)
- Hannibal Rising (2006)
Films and TV in release order
- Manhunter (1986), Michael Mann’s adaptation of Red Dragon, with Brian Cox
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991), directed by Jonathan Demme
- Hannibal (2001), directed by Ridley Scott, with Julianne Moore as Clarice
- Red Dragon (2002), directed by Brett Ratner, with Edward Norton as Will Graham
- Hannibal Rising (2007), with Gaspard Ulliel
- Hannibal (NBC, 2013–2015), developed by Bryan Fuller, with Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy
The books and films don’t always agree. In Harris’s novel Hannibal, Clarice ends up running away with Lecter. The 2001 film changes the ending: Clarice handcuffs herself to Lecter, and he escapes by cutting off his own hand. CBS’s Clarice (2021), a sequel set in 1993, couldn’t use Lecter at all because the rights to the characters are split between different companies.
Trivia and behind-the-scenes facts
- The Silence of the Lambs won all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. It was only the third film to do so, after It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is also the only horror film to have won Best Picture.
- Hopkins won Best Actor with only about 16 minutes on screen, a Guinness World Record for the shortest screen time in a winning Best Actor performance. Counts that include scenes where he is heard but not seen put his total closer to 25 minutes.
- On the AFI’s 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains list (2003), Lecter ranks first among villains. Norman Bates is second.
- In Manhunter the name is spelled “Lecktor.” Cox based his performance partly on the Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.
- Hopkins drew on HAL 9000 and on Truman Capote’s way of speaking for the voice. He has denied the rumor that he based it on Katharine Hepburn.
- In the novel The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter has a sixth finger on his left hand, a detail the 1991 film leaves out.
- Mikkelsen won the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television for Hannibal.