Actor in silence of the lambs12/29/2023 ![]() There were positives and negatives to the experience though. “Because I had been a heavy teenager and lost all the weight to be an actress, to then have to gain it all back really messed with my head,” she says. That created the first major challenge for Smith who was required to put on 25 pounds for the part. Part of Buffalo Bill’s modus operandi in the film saw him target plus size women. I stayed in there for about an hour at a time.” Stuff like what would it be like if your contact lenses dried out or if you had your period. I thought about what it would be like to be in those circumstances. I went in, closed the door and turned the light off. Which is…partly true,” she jokes.Įager to immerse herself in the role of Catherine, Smith prepared herself for the experience of being trapped in a pit by locking herself in a wardrobe while ruminating on the “worst possible circumstances” someone would face in such a situation. ![]() “There was one agent in particular who said I was forever going to be known as the fat girl in the pit. While Pfeiffer rejected the chance to star in The Silence of the Lambs, there were some trying to dissuade Smith from her involvement. Smith does wonder what the film might have turned out like had she signed on to star. ![]() Both turned the film down, with Pfeiffer deciding the subject matter was too dark. Pfeiffer was Demme’s original choice for the role of Clarice while he initially approached Sean Connery for the role of Lecter. She had done Married to the Mob with Jonathan. She was considering playing the part of Clarice. “My mother looked after Michelle Pfeiffer, which was how we met. Smith also credits her friend at the time, Michelle Pfeiffer, with helping her get the part. She saw some parallels between her relationship with her mother – trailblazing Hollywood publicist Lois Smith – and that of Catherine and her own high-profile politician mom. That I was really going to go as far as I could go as Catherine.” If anything, I had to convince him that I was going to go all the way. He brought me in and explained to me what he had in mind. They would never just hire an unknown actor for such an important part. When Demme first met with Smith to discuss the part he had one important question for Smith: “Why on Earth would you ever want to do this?” As time wears on, Catherine’s increasingly desperate and distressing state only cranks up the tension with audiences aware of the horrifying fate potentially awaiting her. It’s her welfare and fate that provides the emotional heartbeat of an otherwise dread-fuelled psychological thriller. While the majority of Jonathan Demme’s film focuses on Jodie Foster’s FBI-agent-in-training Clarice Starling and her attempts at coaxing Anthony Hopkins’s dangerously disarming cannibal Hannibal Lecter into helping track down Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine, Smith took on the crucial role of the serial killer’s hostage, trapped down a disused well in the basement-turned-dungeon of his seemingly ordinary suburban home. The role of Catherine certainly presented a worthy challenge. “I was just a gung-ho young actress who wanted to do something I didn’t think I could do,” she explains. But she possessed one crucial quality: she was fearless. Smith was a relative newcomer to acting when she was cast as Catherine back in 1989 having spent her formative years as part of the CBGB New York punk scene. They knew me but they just couldn’t quite figure it out.” I would get that at the school my kids went to. “With The Silence of the Lambs, it’s more like ‘wait a minute, how do I know you?’. “I don’t get recognized for it that much compared with something like Grey’s Anatomy,” she tells Den of Geek. Not that fans always immediately realise it. Yet to some, she will always be remembered as Catherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin who winds up being kidnapped by Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill, in The Silence of The Lambs. She’s starred in the cult classic Series 7: The Contenders, had roles in blockbusters including Interstellar and featured prominently on Grey’s Anatomy, Ray Donovan, and Bates Motelto name but a few. ![]() Brooke Smith has enjoyed a career spanning more than three decades across the big and small screen.
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