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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Jodie Foster wasn't good in TSotL

17 replies

Gffbjjgfddbjkkm · 18/08/2025 00:31

Just watched The Silence of the Lambs and take it as read that Jodie Foster will be brilliant.

Except, I think she was pretty awful in this film.

AIBU?

OP posts:
ThePinkPoster · 18/08/2025 00:33

She was pretty good I thought. However Buffalo Bill was brilliant. Terrifying.

Thedogscollar · 18/08/2025 00:39

Well it's subjective isn't it?
You think JF isn't good in this film but plenty think she was good to outstanding in it.
Whatever we think she has had a very successful acting career to date.

Devilsmommy · 18/08/2025 00:43

She comes across really wooden to me but I think it's supposed to be her being quite prim and proper in it and new to the job. Agree with @ThePinkPoster that buffalo bill is outstanding 😁

Gymnopediegivesmethewillies · 18/08/2025 01:05

She was okay but outclassed by Anthony Hopkins and Buffalo Bill.

However, in The Accused she was magnificent

NoVibrato · 18/08/2025 01:22

Devilsmommy · 18/08/2025 00:43

She comes across really wooden to me but I think it's supposed to be her being quite prim and proper in it and new to the job. Agree with @ThePinkPoster that buffalo bill is outstanding 😁

The character is perhaps not so much prim and proper as nervously new on the job and often desperately outclassed by the Hannibal character who presses on all her vulnerable spots (including her white lower class background; the film is unusually nuanced for America in its sense of class issues). She's having to pokerface and deadpan and mask all the time. I think Foster conveys this well.

CrispySquid · 18/08/2025 01:25

I thought she was brilliant. Her character is supposed to be a little stoic and wooden as she’s an up and coming young female in the male-dominated FBI training program and she is trying to come across as composed and unemotional as possible to prove her competency as well as not trying to give Lecter an inch who is constantly looking for tells from her.

The film is a complete masterpiece. They don’t make/write thrillers like that anymore!

MuckFusk · 18/08/2025 04:13

She had to share the screen with Hopkins for much of the film. Anyone would look bad by comparison. He's one of the finest actors of all time.
She was also playing a character who was supposed to be internal and repressed, so she was playing Clarice as she should have been played. It's interesting that in the sequel Julianne Moore played Clarice completely differently.

LoudSnoringDog · 18/08/2025 04:53

Weirdly, not watched this film in years and just happened to watch it on my flight Friday to Bangkok. Anthony Hopkins is phenomenal in the film. I thought Jodie Foster was good ( she’s been better in other films)
Anthony Hopkins though- fabulous

LoudSnoringDog · 18/08/2025 04:55

CrispySquid · 18/08/2025 01:25

I thought she was brilliant. Her character is supposed to be a little stoic and wooden as she’s an up and coming young female in the male-dominated FBI training program and she is trying to come across as composed and unemotional as possible to prove her competency as well as not trying to give Lecter an inch who is constantly looking for tells from her.

The film is a complete masterpiece. They don’t make/write thrillers like that anymore!

Edited

The bit where AH is in the ambulance had my heart pounding. Agree- don’t make films like this anymore

Kurkara · 18/08/2025 06:41

I didn't see the film until it had already been hyped to the high heavens. I remember the first scene we see her thinking how obvious it was that she is an actor, it really interrupted the suspension of disbelief. But female actors were pretty constrained at the time in terms of their physicality - what would be tolerated. Sigourney Weaver bulking herself up for Aliens, actually taking up space as a strong woman, was a huge disruption of the norm.

Dangermoo · 18/08/2025 09:51

She is a rookie FBI agent, on her first huge case; she is meant to display vulnerability. Watch her in Flight Plan, where her young daughter disappears on board a plane. She is outstanding in playing the part of a mother in huge anguish.

CalzoneOnLegs · 18/08/2025 09:56

Took me months to realise Captain Stottlemeyer in Monk was Buffalo Bill.

Gffbjjgfddbjkkm · 18/08/2025 10:17

It was the bits when she was supposed to be emotional and panicked that I thought were particularly weak. For example, when he hangs up on her and she just keeps repeating "Dr Lecter?" - pretty weak

OP posts:
mylovedoesitgood · 18/08/2025 10:20

I thought she was fine but never thought she deserved an Oscar for her performance, unlike Anthony Hopkins.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 18/08/2025 10:56

She was okay but Tony Hopkins was SO good that anyone would look inferior acting next to him.

The part where she walks through the prison to meet him for the first time always make my heart stop.

Also OT but the French & Saunders take of TSOTL is epic!

Catpiece · 18/08/2025 11:19

One of my favourite films. JF and AH are brilliant in it
edited to add “put the lotion in the basket” chilling

Coffeeishot · 18/08/2025 11:23

She is supposed to be a bit uptight and not show emotion in her job because she is a woman, I think she did that well was she replaced by Julianne Moore as clarice or is she a different character?

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