Hannibal (film) realized that Zaillian was "exorcising the 600 pages of the book. He was distilling through discussion what he was gonna finally do ... Frankly I could have just made it." It was unclear if Jodie Foster (Clarice Starling) and Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter) would reprise their respective roles for which they won Academy Awards in "The Silence of the Lambs" (best actress/actor). It became apparent that the producers and the studio could do without one of the original "stars" and would go on to find a replacement. The withdrawal of both Foster and Hopkins could possibly have been terminal for
Jodie Foster in England and co-starred veteran actors David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned eighteen. She gained positive notices for her performances in Adrian Lyne's debut feature film "Foxes" (1980), which focuses on the lives of Los Angeles teenagers, and "Carny" (1980), in which she played a waitress who runs away from her former life by joining a touring carnival. Aware that child stars are often unable to successfully continue their careers into adulthood, Foster became a full-time student at Yale in fall 1980, and her