Hannibal (film) Hannibal (film) Hannibal is a 2001 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from Thomas Harris's 1999 novel of the same name. It is the sequel to the 1991 Academy Award–winning film "The Silence of the Lambs" in which Anthony Hopkins returns to his role as the serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Julianne Moore co-stars, in the role first held by Jodie Foster, as FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling. The film had a difficult and occasionally troubling pre-production history. When the novel was published in 1999, "The Silence of the Lambs" director Jonathan Demme, screenwriter Ted Tally, and
Clarice Starling information, which Crawford has specifically warned her to keep secret from Lecter. She tells Lecter that she was raised in a small town in West Virginia with her father, a town marshal. When she was 10 years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery; he died a month after the incident. Her mother subsequently worked as a hotel chambermaid, but was unable to support her entire family without a life insurance settlement from her husband's death. Starling was sent to live with her uncle on a Montana sheep and horse farm, from which she ran away in