In the film, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter to help apprehend another serial killer, known only as "Buffalo Bill".
When The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, it received much critical acclaim. Widely regarded[by whom?] as one of the best movies ever made, the film won the top five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Clarice Starling (Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, by Jack Crawford (Glenn) of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. He tasks her with interviewing Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, believing Lecter's insight might be useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" (Levine) who skins his female victims' corpses. Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she is led by Dr. Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald) to Lecter's solitary quarters. Although initially pleasant and courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him and rebuffs her. As she is leaving, one of the prisoners flicks semen at her. Lecter, who considers the discourtesy "unspeakably ugly", calls Starling back and tells her to seek out an old patient of his. This leads her to a storage shed where she discovers a man's severed head. She returns to Lecter, who tells her that the man is linked to Buffalo Bill. Though Lecter denies killing this man, he offers to profile Buffalo Bill if he can be transferred away from Chilton, whom he detests. Wikipedia