LOS ANGELES — Actor Ted Levine says the gender presentation threaded through his serial-killer character Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs” was “f—ing wrong,” Feb. 16, 2026.
Speaking as the Oscar-winning thriller marks 35 years since it hit theaters, Levine said time, work and conversations with transgender people have changed how he views the film’s legacy — even as he insists he never intended Buffalo Bill to be read as gay or trans.
Ted Levine says “it’s f—ing wrong” — and why he’s saying it now
Levine’s comments arrived as anniversary retrospectives resurfaced one of the film’s longest-running criticisms: that a villain coded as gender-nonconforming helped cement “trans killer” stereotypes in popular culture. In a recent interview summarized by Entertainment Weekly, Ted Levine said he has grown “a lot wiser about transgender issues” since 1991 and now regrets how the story’s language and imagery can land.
“It’s unfortunate that the film vilified that, and it’s f—ing wrong,” Ted Levine said, adding that the shift came “over time” as he became more aware of “the reality of the meaning of gender.” He also stressed that, in his mind, Buffalo Bill was “a f—ed-up heterosexual man,” not a stand-in for trans people.
Other coverage of the anniversary has echoed that tension between intention and impact. In a separate roundup, The Independent noted Levine’s view that some dialogue “doesn’t hold up too well” today and highlighted producer Edward Saxon’s admission that the filmmakers “weren’t sensitive enough” to how stereotypes can harm.
What Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill was — and what audiences heard anyway
“The Silence of the Lambs,” adapted from Thomas Harris’ novel, follows FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she hunts “Buffalo Bill,” a killer who murders women and skins them to fashion a “woman suit.” The film was released Feb. 14, 1991, according to the American Film Institute’s catalog entry, and it landed in a cultural moment when mainstream film and TV rarely included trans people outside of punch lines or shock reveals.
The script tries to draw a bright line: Lecter tells Starling that Buffalo Bill is “not really transsexual,” while also noting that the killer sought — and was denied — gender-affirming surgery. For many viewers, those details didn’t neutralize the imagery; they strengthened it. Buffalo Bill’s basement, the make-believe transformation, and the violence became fused in the public mind, even if the film’s dialogue insists the character is something else entirely.
Levine’s new perspective matters partly because Buffalo Bill is not a minor footnote in the movie. Ted Levine’s performance is central to the plot’s fear and fascination, and the character’s gender presentation is used as texture for that fear. When Ted Levine now calls that framing “f—ing wrong,” he is acknowledging that the movie’s craftsmanship can still carry cultural collateral damage.
The controversy didn’t start in 2026
Debates around “The Silence of the Lambs” have been simmering for decades, and they have shifted as language and visibility changed. A 2021 explainer from SlashFilm traced how early backlash in 1991-92 often centered on homophobia — activists and critics worried audiences would read Buffalo Bill as a gay stereotype and take that stigma into real life.
As trans visibility increased, the conversation broadened. In a 2021 essay for Syfy Wire, the film is framed as trying to dodge the label of a “trans villain” while still building its suspense around inaccurate ideas about gender identity — a hedge that, for many viewers, doesn’t absolve the trope.
And in 2019, Them placed Buffalo Bill in a longer horror lineage that links gender nonconformity to monstrosity, arguing that such portrayals teach audiences to treat transness as something eerie, unstable or dangerous.
What has changed since Ted Levine made the film
Part of what makes Ted Levine’s reassessment stand out is the contrast with how the movie was received in 1991 and 1992. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences notes that “The Silence of the Lambs” won best picture and also took home awards for actor, actress, directing and adapted screenplay at the 64th Academy Awards — a rare sweep of the top categories — in its official memorable-moments recap.
That success helped lock the film into the canon, which is why its weaker cultural assumptions have been replayed, rewatched and reinterpreted for a generation. Today, audiences are more likely to separate “what the script said” from “what the image taught,” and more likely to judge representation by outcome as well as intent.
Ted Levine isn’t disowning the movie; he is naming the part that aged poorly. His point is not that villains can’t exist, but that gender nonconformity shouldn’t be used as shorthand for deviance — especially in a film big enough to shape the public’s imagination.
Thirty-five years after Buffalo Bill first stepped into the dark, Ted Levine’s blunt verdict lands as both an apology and a reminder: iconic movies can be expertly made and still get something fundamental wrong.
