The strange link between Hannibal Lecter and Ace Ventura
The 1990s was absolutely rife with cinema of the highest quality, and its best works also starkly varied in tone and genre. Two of the most memorable works are undoubtedly Jonathan Demme’s 1991 psychological horror thriller The Silence of the Lambs and Tom Shadyac’s 1994 comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
These two very different films perhaps epitomised the dual direction that American cinema was heading in; from dark explorations of the inner workings of human psychology to slapstick, almost buffoonish comedy, and film fans were treated to two of ’90s cinema’s most iconic characters, the fearsome serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, and the barmy animal detective, Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura.
While Carrey and Hopkins’ respectively performances are absolute chalk and cheese, Carrey seemingly approached his character with the same seriousness and attention as Hopkins’ Oscar-winning effort. Carrey’s Ace Ventura co-star Courtney Cox once told Howard Stern of Carrey’s preparation, noting, “He wasn’t like, ‘All righty then’ [in rehearsal]. He just was playing it straighter. He turned it on when we started filming, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s the funniest person.'”
Carrey had ramped up his character when they began filming, knowing that he needed to craft a performance that jumped out of the screen. He told Roger Ebert, “When you get a script like Pet Detective, if you try to play it real, it would have been boring as hell. Horrifying. So, I was looking to do something that was really unacceptable.”
The result was that Carrey’s character arrived on screen larger than life, breathing slapstick hilarity into his co-stars and the film’s audience. In some ways, this mirrored the kind of dedication that Hopkins delivered in his Silence of the Lambs, only the character couldn’t have been any different from the goofy animal detective.
In a discussion on Inside the Actor’s Studio, Carrey explained how he knew both he and Hopkins had approached their characters from the same angle. “I called Anthony Hopkins because I love Anthony Hopkins,” the actor said. “And so I asked him to dinner. We found out over dinner that our method was exactly the same for Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter. Exactly the same.”
Carrey had famously focused his Ace Ventura character on birds, and while Hopkins had also been inspired by animals for his iconic character, he’d instead consulted the behaviour and movements of reptiles and arachnids to deliver his fear-inducing version of Hannibal Lecter.
Interestingly, though, while Carrey used the word “method” to describe both Hopkins’ and his own approach to their respective characters, Hopkins had previously stated his disdain for those who subscribe to the method acting approach, describing such practitioners as unbearable.
In an interview with HuffPost, Hopkins noted, “It’s a pain in the ass. Who the hell wants to be with some miserable grump because he wants to get his performance right, so you have to call him this or call him that? It’s so boring. I’ve been with actors like that, and they’re a pain in the ass, they really are. They’re unpleasant to work with, and I don’t think they’re always that good either.”
Check out Carrey and Hopkins in action as Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter, respectively, to see if there’s any performative link between the pair, as Carrey attests.
