The Silence of the Lambs
With only 16 minutes of screen time, Anthony Hopkins' performance in this movie is the second shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. David Niven's performance in "Separate Tables" (1958) is first, at 15 minutes, 38 seconds.
Hannibal Lecter was not originally supposed to be British. The character is described to be from Baltimore, not Great Britain. Gene Hackman, an American actor, was originally supposed to play this role before he backed out, and Brian Cox, another American actor, played him in the original prequel, "Manhunter," released in 1986. But Anthony Hopkins so owned the role that they changed it for him, revealing in later novels that Lecter originally came from Lithuania, then lived in France and the U.S., explaining his unusual accent.
Gene Hackman first bought the adaption rights to the novel. He planned to direct this movie and play either Dr. Hannibal Lecter or Jack Crawford, but he withdrew after watching a clip of himself in "Mississippi Burning" (1988) at the 61st Annual Academy Awards, which made him uneasy about taking any more violent roles.