‘Silence of the Lambs’ actor to stop at Buffalo Bill’s House this weekend
“Do you guys have fries on the sandwiches?”
When asked about what memories stand out from her time in Pittsburgh 36 years ago during the making of “The Silence of the Lambs,” Brooke Smith still recalls the regionally beloved, slaw-and-meat-and-fries concoctions that have become the signature item at Primanti Bros. restaurants.
Then there’s the libations.
“I also remember drinking a beer called Iron City,” she said earlier this week from her home in Los Angeles. “It was such a great city.”
When Smith was in Pittsburgh to play Catherine Martin, the senator’s daughter who is being held captive by serial killer Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” she was 23 and just getting her career going. Now 59 and with a daughter of her own attending Bard College, Smith has had a wide-ranging career in both television and film. She worked on movies by revered directors like Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Louis Malle and Christopher Nolan, and has appeared on many television series, including “Grey’s Anatomy,” where she was Dr. Erica Hahn for four seasons.
This weekend, Smith will be looking back on “The Silence of the Lambs” when she appears at Buffalo Bill’s House in Perryopolis. Some of the scenes near the end of the movie were filmed at the Victorian home built in 1910 on the banks of the Youghiogheny River. It has since been turned into a “Silence of the Lambs”-themed vacation rental, and offers tours and special events.
Smith will be at Buffalo Bill’s House from Friday through Sunday. She’ll be leading guided tours of the abode, sign autographs, be available for photo opportunities, participate in a question-and-answer session and be on hand for an outdoor screening of “The Silence of the Lambs” Saturday evening.
“I went to the house once before and it was a lot of fun,” Smith said.
Smith’s father, Gene Smith, was a reporter for The New York Times, and her mother, Lois Smith, was a publicist whose clients included Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Warren Beatty. When Jonathan Demme, the director of “The Silence of the Lambs,” was casting the movie, Michelle Pfeiffer told Demme about Smith. Pfeiffer had appeared in Demme’s “Married to the Mob” a few years before, and making it into “The Silence of the Lambs” provided a career boost for Smith, who had just a couple of movie and TV credits at that point.
“The Silence of the Lambs” went on to win five Academy Awards, sweeping the major categories. It joined the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2011, and routinely turns up on lists of the 100 best American movies.
Did Smith suspect “The Silence of the Lambs” would become so highly regarded?
“No way,” Smith explained. “I knew it was going to be great. The script was incredible, and just all the people involved with it. … I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t know it was going to be a classic.”
Smith said she generally prefers acting in movies to television. Work in the latter tends to be much more fast paced, and “I just want everything to stop being in a rush all the time.”
Before her acting career began, Smith was a habitue of the 1980s hardcore punk scene in New York, journeying into the city from suburban Rockland County to check out bands like Bad Brains and Agnostic Front at legendary venues like CBGB. She brought her camera with her, and gathered her photographs together in a 2022 book, “Sunday Matinee: Photographs by Brooke Smith.”
She was drawn to the hardcore punk scene because “it was the most honest thing I could see.” Smith still listens to the music and maintains friendships with musicians who were part of the scene four decades ago.
“Everyone finds their chosen family at that age,” she said. “I didn’t fit in anywhere else.”
And Smith admits that in some ways she doesn’t feel like she fits in all that much in Los Angeles nowadays. She hasn’t auditioned for any parts in a while, and the afteraffects of the 2023 writers strike, the COVID-19 pandemic, and corporate mergers have unsettled the industry.
“I don’t know what’s happening in Hollywood,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem great.”
More information on Smith’s appearance at Buffalo Bill’s House can be found at buffalobillshouse.com.