Looking Directly At The Audience

Demme's decision was to abandon the convention that actors look slightly off camera during conversation. Clarice Starling is addressed directly into the lens by nearly every man in the film, so the audience occupies the position of the person leaning in on her: the boss, the entomologist, the sheriff's deputies, the psychiatrist behind the glass. The result is a thriller that reproduces the experience of being appraised. Jodie Foster plays Starling as visibly working harder than everyone else in the room, with her accent and her height and her rank all against her, and Anthony Hopkins builds Lecter out of stillness and diction in about sixteen minutes of screen time, which won him Best Actor.