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
Clarice Assad left when Clarice was around 8, off to Paris seeking success on virgin but savvy turf, and putting on indefinite hiatus those cherished sessions together. Infrequent visits couldn’t reattach the torn ligatures, and Clarice abandoned music completely. “For so long,” she remembers, “I didn’t even touch the piano, or make any music at all because I connected it with him.” After a time, though, she began to play again. “I realized I was doing it for myself,” Clarice explains. The urge to continue her development was too great, the Assad legacy in her DNA. Clarice was born with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome,