Every actor of Hannibal Lecter in movies and TV shows, rated

Everyone loves a good villain. Without the scenery-chewing, dastardly antagonists our heroes fight, things just aren’t fun. Sometimes villains become cultural icons in their own right, like Michael Meyers in Halloween or even Jeremy Irons as Scar in The Lion King. Of course, one of the greatest villains is Hannibal Lecter. Created by writer Thomas Harris, Hannibal the Cannibal was a villain in the novels Red Dragon in 1981, Silence of the Lambs in 1988, Hannibal in 1999, and Hannibal Rising in 2006, and his well-bred eccentricity and his ferocious bloodlust makes him as attractive as he is terrifying. These books have since been adapted into several Hannibal Lecter movies and an NBC television serieswith four different actors playing the aristocratic Lithuanian serial killer, each with their own unique look.

But who did it best? No one who was cast as the intelligent cannibal managed to perform the role really badly, although some did better than others. Through the vision of different writers and directors, each showed us their version of a man who was terrifying not only because he was capable of killing and eating people, but also because he was so incredibly charismatic.

The late French actor Gaspard Ulliel played the youngest Hannibal we’ve seen so far in 2007. “Hannibal’s Rebellion”. It was directed by Peter Webber, and the film was written by Harris, who almost simultaneously wrote the novel on which it is based. After all, the book was released two months before the movie, and both received mediocre financial returns and even worse critical reviews. (/Own 2007 film review found The Rise of Hannibal average.) Regardless, Uliel isn’t to blame, and his portrayal of the younger, slightly less sophisticated Lecter is pretty good.

Uliel’s performance allows us to see Lecter before he sawed off all his bumps, when he was just a traumatized young sociopath with a taste for the human flesh. The actor is a good mix of charming and creepy, revealing the different sides of his character and why he is able to get away with so much even at a much earlier stage in his life. Unfortunately, Hannibal Rising is a hot mess on its own, and it’s hard to be a good Hannibal in a bad Hannibal movie, so Ulliel is relegated to last place.

Anthony Hopkins won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Hannibal in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, and also played the character in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal sequel and Brett Ratner’s prequel Red Dragon. .” Hopkins’ performance is uneven over the course of the three films; when he fits the character right, he’s perfect, but sometimes he overplays or just phones it in (I’m looking at you, Red Dragon.”) So Although Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance in The Silence of the Lambs, we also have to look at Hannibal and Red Dragon to appreciate his time as Hannibal as a whole. It’s a bit of a mess, and the great parts don’t completely overshadow the not-so-great.

Ironically, one of the most popular moments in The Silence of the Lambs was actually improvised by Hopkinsin which he hisses after telling the camera (and the audience) that he ate a scribe’s liver with “fava beans and a good Chianti.” It’s really scary and works well at the moment, but Hopkins completely mispronounces Chianti, and Hannibal, whose mother was Italian, never.

The very first adaptation of any of Harris’ Hannibal novels was Michael Mann’s Manhunter in 1986. It’s a film in which the plot and characters of Red Dragon are created in a psychedelic, terrifying vision of the early days of serial killer profiling. Manhunter follows FBI criminal profiler Will Graham (William Peterson) who takes early retirement to help catch a serial killer the FBI calls the Tooth Fairy (Tom Noonan), prompting him to seek help from our favorite cannibal psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal “The Lecturer” (Brian Cox). Coke is absolutely horrible like this version of Hannibal, where both the actor and the film around him portray the character far more realistically than any other adaptation. Cox does his best to be charming when anyone but Graham is around, but completely drops the mask when the man who caught him asks for his help. He is a cold sociopath and psychopath whose reactions are calculated and you can almost see how Hannibal thinks how he acts.

Cox is a fantastic actor who has played many incredible roles in film and television, but his role as Hannibal is one of the best. While other actors who have played him have made Hannibal more exaggerated and almost operatic in demeanor, Cox’s Hannibal seems as sensitive and believable as Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacy. And that, folks, is indeed it’s scary.

Bryan Fuller’s NBC series Hannibal took elements from all four Harris novels and turned them into a new, beautiful, complex adaptation with a sinister and sexy take on the titular Man-Eater, played here by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen is absolutely wonderful as a highly stylized, dramatic interpretation of the character – indescribably charming, educated and talented. In addition, he is always expertly dressed and has a great love for the culinary arts, preparing extravagant (and often crowded) dinners for his unsuspecting guests.

While actors such as Hugh Grant, David Tennant and John Cusack they were all considered for the role of Hannibal on Fuller’s showMikkelsen is so perfect that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else taking on the character and doing it better. In combination with the on-screen chemistry Mikkelsen has with his co-starsespecially the show’s Will Graham, Hugh Dancy, his Hannibal is a kind of pansexual force that can’t be denied. It’s no surprise that he manages to routinely outwit the FBI and get away with his crimes for decades before Graham figures him out, given how much people trust him. There are even moments where we get hints of the evil behind the mask, and it slips away like Cox’s performance in a play, and it makes the characterization all the more powerful.

Hannibal was unfortunately canceled after just three seasonsmeaning we never got a chance to see Fuller’s take on the events of Silence of the Lambs. Still, at least we got those three incredible seasons and a better Hannibal.