Thriller film following years. Rob Reiner's "Misery" (1990), based on a book by Stephen King, featured Kathy Bates as an unbalanced fan who terrorizes an incapacitated author (James Caan) who is in her care. Other films include Curtis Hanson's "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (1992) and "Unlawful Entry" (1992), starring Ray Liotta. Detectives/FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular motif in the 1990s. A famous example is Jonathan Demme's Best Picture–winning crime thriller "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991)—in which young FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) engages in a psychological conflict with a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal
Jodie Foster "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed towards Foster, whom the critics alleged was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller "Catchfire", which had been filmed before "Silence", but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success. In October 1991, Foster released her first feature