Silence of the Lambs: Jodie Foster reveals she and Anthony Hopkins were 'really scared' of each other

Jodie Foster really abided by the silence part of The Silence of the Lambs.

Both she and costar Anthony Hopkins won Oscars for their performances in that 1991 movie, which also won Best Picture, and two others. And now we have better insight into what might’ve made that on-screen relationship work so well.

“Nope, never spoke to him. He was scary!” the 53-year-old revealed on The Graham Norton Show when the host asked her if those rumors were true. There promoting her latest directing effort, Money Monster, Foster explained that the two were separated nearly the entire shoot by the glass partitions and jail cell where his Hannibal Lecter spent much of his time. “We got to the end of the movie and had never really had a conversation,” she said.

“I avoided him as much as I could. I really avoided him,” Foster added. But it turns out, the fearful feeling was mutual, as she discovered on their last day of filming. “He came up to me… And I said — I don’t know, I sort of had a tear in my eye — I was like, ‘I was really scared of you.’ And he said, “I was scared of you!'”

See Foster’s full explanation in the video above.