‘Silence of the Lambs’ Slammed for Trans Representation by Star of Movie

More than three decades after its release, one of Hollywood’s most iconic thrillers is back in the cultural crossfire.

Ted Levine, the actor who portrayed the infamous serial killer Buffalo Bill in the 1991 blockbuster Silence of the Lambs, is now criticizing his own performance. He says the film unintentionally fed negative perceptions about transgender people. The comments come as Hollywood faces renewed pressure from activist groups and political critics who argue the entertainment industry has spent years pushing confusion about gender into mainstream culture.

Levine, now 68, marked the movie’s 35th anniversary with new reflections. And they are far from subtle.

“There are some parts of that script that just don’t hold up today,” he said. “We’re all a lot wiser now, and some of those lines are unfortunate. It’s f—— wrong. You can quote me.”

The film, which starred Jodie Foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as the imprisoned cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter, became one of the most celebrated thrillers in American cinema. It earned five Academy Awards and turned Buffalo Bill into one of the most disturbing villains ever put on screen.

Buffalo Bill abducts and skins his female victims to craft what he calls a “woman suit,” a plot point that critics have long claimed blurred the line between mental illness and gender identity. The script tried to clarify that Bill “is not a real transsexual.” But audiences in 1991 were not debating gender theory. They were watching a violent predator whose obsession with identity fueled nightmares.

Levine says he never viewed Bill as transgender. “I played him as a messed-up heterosexual man, not as gay or trans,” he said. “But that might not have been obvious to everyone.”

One longtime LGBTQ media strategist told us the controversy never went away. “Buffalo Bill became shorthand for a stereotype,” the campaigner said. “Even if the filmmakers didn’t intend it, the impact was real.”

The reassessment comes at a tense cultural moment. With President Donald Trump back in the White House and the administration pushing back on progressive gender policies, many critics say Hollywood is selectively rewriting its past to align with the politics of today.

A film historian said the renewed debate was inevitable. “Silence of the Lambs is a masterpiece,” he noted. “But it came from an era when Hollywood often used gender variance to signal danger or deviance. Today, the industry is quick to disown anything that doesn’t match its modern messaging.”

Edward Saxon, one of the film’s producers, also reflected on the criticism. He insists Buffalo Bill was never intended to represent transgender people.

“He was sick. That was always the point,” Saxon said. “We followed the book very closely. But looking back, we weren’t sensitive enough to how those images could reinforce old stereotypes.”

Saxon added that the team never imagined the character would become a lightning rod decades later. “There’s regret,” he admitted. “But it didn’t come from malice. We thought it was obvious that Bill was a damaged, aberrant personality.”

Silence of the Lambs has unexpectedly remained politically relevant. President Trump often referenced Hannibal Lecter during his 2024 and 2025 campaign rallies, joking about the character’s brilliance while slamming the Biden administration’s border failures.

Trump called Lecter “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” a line that consistently drew laughs from supporters frustrated with rising migrant crime during the previous administration.

Saxon didn’t find the comparison amusing. “To compare people crossing the border to Hannibal Lecter is about as perverse as anything we came up with in the film,” he said.

But supporters of President Trump say the point was clear: Hollywood villains remain fictional. The real-world failures of past leadership were not.

Even at 35 years old, Silence of the Lambs has not faded into the background. The debates surrounding identity, representation, violence, and artistic responsibility continue to follow it.

And now, with its star openly questioning the legacy of Buffalo Bill, the conversation has been revived yet again—this time in a political climate that looks very different than it did in 1991.