There are some roles that people seem born to play, whether it be Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver or Kate Hudson in Almost Famous. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the journey to finding these roles comes easily, with many alternate courses of history in which the actors we associate with their most iconic roles were once doubted or not considered the best person for the part. This occurred during the casting process for one of the most influential horror films of all time, with the director having cold feet about the actor intended for the leading role, Jodie Foster.

Jodie Foster is one of the most influential actors of all time, with a self-assured and strong presence that has defined classic films like Taxi Driver, Panic Room and Inside Man. After starting out in the business as a child, working with Martin Scorsese on his early 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, also starring alongside a young Laura Dern in the project, the actor went on to become an unofficial icon of his filmography, with her role as Iris in Taxi Driver becoming one of the most controversial and talked about characters of his career.

But while these films have all created their own dent in the world of Hollywood, there was one later role that became the spearhead of her collective work, with the actor taking a break from the business and returning with a bang through Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film, The Silence of the Lambs.

Foster’s role as Clarice Starling in the Anthony Hopkins horror thriller might be one of the most iconic from not only the ’90s but the horror genre as a whole. It is one of the most suspenseful and unnerving films of all time, with a villain who is largely remembered as one of the most terrifying due to his cannibalistic tendencies and disturbing level of indifference to his crimes.

However, the role is seen as one of the reigning triumphs of Foster’s career, despite the fact that Demme initially didn’t think she was right for the role and didn’t think highly of her acting skills. The director once recalled saying to the producers of the film, “You know, I don’t think Jodie Foster would be good in this part. She’s such a California person… I didn’t believe her Boston accent [in 1988’s The Accused]. I saw her ‘acting’ all over the place and I wasn’t impressed.”

It’s hard to imagine someone not immediately seeing how fitting Foster is for the role. She embodies someone who is both incredibly intelligent and unjaded due to her youth and lack of experience, making her the perfect agent for the case in her sheer determination and grit. The performances and technical achievements of the film are still picked apart and analysed to this day, with endless discourse around the unsettling close-ups and Foster’s timeless performance.

While Demme might not have seen her potential immediately, there’s no doubt that he soon discovered no one better for the part.