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As The Silence of the Lambs celebrates a major milestone, the actor behind Buffalo Bill is acknowledging that certain elements of the film have not stood the test of time.
On Valentine’s Day, the groundbreaking, Oscar-winning 1991 horror classic celebrated its 35th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Ted Levine — who earned acclaim for his portrayal of a serial killer who skinned his female victims — addressed critiques that it has earned from the queer and transgender communities.
“There are certain aspects of the movie that don’t hold up too well,” Levine told The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview. “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.”
The Silence of the Lambs follows FBI trainee Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, who teams up with imprisoned cannibal and expert psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to track down Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb, a prolific serial killer who lures in and then peels his victims to create a “woman suit.”
While the script never explicitly states Buffalo Bill’s gender identity, and Lecter even argues that he is “not really transsexual,” it does note that Gumb unsuccessfully applied for gender-affirming surgery. Many viewers have interpreted the character as queer, with some critics denouncing the film for perpetuating negative stereotypes associated with the gay and trans communities.
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Levine admitted that while he was making the movie, the possibility of those criticisms did not occur to him, but as he developed a fuller understanding of gender identity, it changed his perspective.
“[It’s] 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,” said the actor. “It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f—ing wrong. And you can quote me on that.”
As for his approach to portraying the character, Levine clarified, “I didn’t play him as being gay or trans. I think he was just a f—ed-up heterosexual man. That’s what I was doing.”
The character of Buffalo Bill, who originated in the 1988 Thomas Harris book, The Silence of the Lambs, drew inspiration from several known serial killers — including Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, and Gary Michael Heidnik.
Director Jonathan Demme’s producing partner on the film adaptation, Edward Saxon, also spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, saying the team did not anticipate sparking outrage among the LGBTQ+ community with their portrayal of Buffalo Bill.
“We were really loyal to the book,” Saxon said. “As we made the film, there was just no question in our minds that Buffalo Bill was a completely aberrant personality — that he wasn’t gay or trans. He was sick.”
He continued, “To that extent, we missed it. From my point of view, we weren’t sensitive enough to the legacy of a lot of stereotypes and their ability to harm.”
Saxon added that though he feels “regret” about it, the movie’s handling of Buffalo Bill did not come from “any place of malice.”
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“It actually came from a place of seeing this guy,” he said. “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.”
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In 2021, the CBS sequel series Clarice addressed Buffalo Bill’s transphobic legacy by introducing a trans character, played by activist Jen Richards, who was forced to reckon with the impact of the serial killer’s fame. While chatting with Entertainment Weekly, Richards pointed out that Buffalo Bill had the power to become so influential because “the transgender community was largely invisible” in the early ’90s.
“That meant that any portrayal of people who were trans had a weight to it, and it informed the public’s opinion of what it means to be trans,” she told EW, noting that Bill could reinforce “a stereotype that already existed that transgender women were people who coveted and wanted to harm women and were part of a misogynistic culture, rather than human beings with an authenticity who are moving through their lives with the same desires and needs as any other human being.”
Despite the controversy surrounding it, The Silence of the Lambs made Oscars history as the first horror film, and third film overall, to sweep the Academy Awards’ Big Five categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Hopkins), Best Actress (for Foster), and Best Adapted Screenplay. To this day, it remains the only horror film to ever win Best Picture.
