Jonathan Demme's first choice for Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter turned down the film as he thought it was 'disgusting'

He was kind of pleased about it though

Anthony Hopkins gave one of the most memorable performances in The Silence of the Lambs as Hannibal Lecter, playing the murderous doctor with an unsettling calmness and wit.

He was actually second choice for the part though, and only received the script after it was turned down by Sean Connery (who I really can't imagine in the role).

Recounting the casting process to Deadline last year, Demme, who died this week at the age of 73, sounded as though his heart wasn't really in the Connery pick, and that he was pleased when the Bond actor flatly turned the film down.

"Everybody at Orion had tremendous respect for [Hopkins as an actor," he recalled. "But everybody wanted to play that part, gosh, from Dustin Hoffman to Morgan Freeman. There was tremendous interest.

"Sean Connery was the only other person I thought could be amazing for this. Connery has that fierce intelligence and also that serious physicality. I love Tony Hopkins, but Sean Connery could be amazing.

"So to take the most commercial path, because Connery was flying very high at the time, we sent the script to Sean Connery first. Word came back shortly that he thought it was disgusting and wouldn’t dream of playing that part. So, great, now we can go to Tony Hopkins."

He added of the "electric" first read-through with Hopkins: "All the executives were there. There was electricity in that room, coming off of what Hopkins was doing. He had found Lecter, and I remember when he delivered the last line. The room was just silent. And my producer, Kenny Utt, just goes, real quiet, “Oh…yeah!”

"I realized the actual bottom line truth of doing Silence of the Lambs, something I felt when I read that book. I thought, this could be the scariest movie ever, and I wanted to make that movie. I wanted to make a Psycho caliber fu*king terrifying movie."