Clarice Starling
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| Hannibal Tetralogy character | |
|---|---|
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| Clarice Starling | |
| Gender | Female |
| Ethnicity | Caucasian |
| Birth | December 23, 1965 |
| Relationships | Hannibal Lecter (partner in solving murder) |
| Education | BA, Criminology and Psychology, University of Virginia, Mental Health Nurse |
| Current status: | Alive |
| Portrayed by: | Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs) Julianne Moore (Hannibal) Masha Skorobogatov (as little girl in The Silence of the Lambs) |
Clarice M. Starling is a fictional character in the novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris.
In the movie adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs she is played by Jodie Foster, while in the movie adaptation of Hannibal she is played by Julianne Moore.
Clarice Starling, as portrayed by Jodie Foster, was ranked the 6th greatest protagonist in film history on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, making her the highest ranking female hero.
[edit] The Silence of the Lambs
In The Silence of the Lambs, Starling is a student at the FBI Academy. She hoped to work at the Behavioral Science Unit, tracking down serial killers and ultimately apprehending them. Her mentor, FBI director Jack Crawford, sends her to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. He is housed in a Baltimore mental institution. Upon arriving at the asylum for her first interview with Lecter, Starling is the subject of the crude attentions of Lecter's captor, the asylum manager Frederick Chilton. She rebuffs him, much to his annoyance, which probably helps her bond with Lecter, who also despises Chilton. As time passes, Lecter gives Starling information about Buffalo Bill, a currently active serial killer being hunted by the FBI, but only in exchange for personal information such as painful memories (which Crawford has specifically warned her to keep secret from Lecter).
She tells Lecter that she was raised in a small town in West Virginia, with her father (a police officer). When she was about ten years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery. He died a month after the incident. Starling was sent to live with her uncle on a Montana sheep and horse farm, from which she briefly ran away in horror when she witnessed the lambs being slaughtered. (The title of the book refers to her being haunted by the screaming she heard from the lambs.)
She spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage. She graduated from the University of Virginia at the top of her class and became a star student of the FBI's training school.
During the investigation, Starling and Lecter form a strange relationship in which Lecter gives her clues in the form of cryptic, riddling information designed to help Starling figure it out for herself. The two grow to respect each other, so when Lecter escapes during a transfer engineered by Chilton to a state prison in Tennessee, Starling feels that he "would consider it rude" to come after her.
Starling feels that Lecter's hints mean that Buffalo Bill's first victim had a personal relationship with him, and goes to the victim's home in Belvedere, Ohio, to interview people who knew her. She unknowingly stumbles onto the killer himself, Jame Gumb (he is living under the alias "Jack Gordon" when they meet). When she sees a Death's Head moth (the same rare kind that Bill stuffs in the throats of each of his victims) flutter through the house, she knows she has found her man and tries to arrest him. Gumb flees and Starling follows him into his basement, where his latest victim is alive and screaming for help. Gumb turns off the electricity in the basement, and stalks Starling through the rooms wearing night vision goggles. He is about to shoot her when she hears him behind her and spins, opening fire into the darkness, killing him. The victim is rescued.
Weeks later, Lecter writes Starling a letter from a hotel room somewhere in Detroit asking her if the lambs have stopped screaming.
The final scene of the book has Starling sleeping quietly and peacefully at a friend's vacation house at the Maryland seashore.
[edit] Hannibal
In Hannibal, Starling is in her early thirties and a full-fledged FBI agent, although her career has been held back by a vengeful superior, Paul Krendler, at the Department of Justice. After a bungled drug raid in which she returns fire after a drug kingpin using an infant as a hostage fires at her, she is blamed for the mess by her superiors. Starling is removed from active duty, mostly at Krendler's instigation. She receives a supportive letter from Lecter, who is (unknown to her at the time) residing in Florence, Italy. One of Lecter's surviving victims, billionaire Mason Verger, is searching for Lecter and has offered a huge reward, which a corrupt Florentine police inspector named Pazzi tries to claim when he deduces Lecter's true identity in Florence, despite Starling's warnings that Lecter is far too dangerous to try to arrest without police backup.
Clarice finds out about Lecter in Florence and attempts to warn Pazzi. As Starling predicted, Lecter knows about the plot that Pazzi has against him, and as a result, he kills Pazzi. Lecter then flees to the US. When he arrives, he immediately starts to follow Starling. Starling, meanwhile, is being harassed at the FBI by various corrupt agents, especially by Krendler, who is secretly assisting Verger in his attempt to capture Lecter. Starling attempts to find Dr. Lecter first, not only to capture him, but to save him from Verger and Krendler. Krendler was framing Starling by planting falsified letters from Lecter, in an attempt to get her fired by the FBI by making them believe that she and Lecter had an intimate and unreported relationship. This only results in her being put on a suspension of leave, but she is now powerless to stop Verger's men. Lecter is captured by Verger, who plans to feed him to a group of specially trained and savage wild boars.
Starling is aware that Lecter is being held by Verger, so she attempts to save him. She is wounded in the ensuing gunfight; Verger is killed by his own sister Margot, whom he had repeatedly raped as a child. Lecter nurses Clarice back to health.
During this time, Lecter captures Krendler, and at an elaborate dinner scene for a drugged Starling and himself, performs a craniotomy on Krendler while he is still alive, to scoop spoonfuls of his forebrain to saute with lemon and capers. The first piece he feeds to Krendler, who replies, "That's pretty good, Buddy." In the novel, he feeds Krendler's brain to Clarice, who finds it very delicious.
Lecter's plan to brainwash Starling ultimately failed. Starling refused to have her own personality sublimated. Then, in the novel's most controversial sequence, she opens her dress and offered her breast to Lecter. Lecter accepted her offer and the two became lovers. They disappear together, only to be sighted again three years later entering the Opera House in Buenos Aires by former orderly Barney Matthews, who had befriended and respected Lecter while he was incarcerated in Baltimore. Barney, fearing for his life, leaves Buenos Aires immediately, never to return.
[edit] Films
In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice's role remains relatively unchanged from the book, although Hannibal significantly diverges from the novel's conclusion, with no reference being made to Lecter's attempts to brainwash Clarice. After refusing the possibilty of eating Krendler's brain, Clarice's hair is trapped in a fridge door by Lecter, prompting her to handcuff herself to him in an attempt to keep him in the house before the police arrive. Faced with the only means of escape being to cut Clarice's hand off, Lecter instead chooses to cut off his own hand and escape, leaving Starling to explain the situation to the police.
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