Thomas Harris

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Thomas Harris.

Thomas Harris (born 1940) is an American author of crime novels, most notably The Silence of the Lambs, which was made into a film of the same title starring Jodie Foster as trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins in an Oscar-winning portrayal of psychopathic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The book is the sequel to Red Dragon, which also included Lecter as a minor character. Red Dragon has been filmed twice, first under the title Manhunter (1986), and later as Red Dragon (2002).

[edit] Life and work

Harris was born in Jackson, Tennessee, but moved as a child with his family to Rich, Mississippi. He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he majored in English and graduated in 1964. While in college, he worked as reporter for the local newspaper, the Waco Tribune-Herald, covering the police beat. In 1968, he moved to New York City to work for the Associated Press.

The deaths of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics inspired Harris to write the 1975 bestselling novel Black Sunday, about the plans of a terrorist group to seize control of a blimp, place a shrapnel bomb on board, and explode it during the Super Bowl. This book was made into a movie starring Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern. It was pointed out that this was the first American novel to feature a terrorist attack on United States soil.^{[citation needed]}

Harris' 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs, was released as a movie in 1991. Harris is known for being private and reportedly reclusive, as he has avoided most media interviews for the past twenty years, and he declined to participate in the movie adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs. But when the film was finished, he sent cases of wine to the cast and crew. Earning $272.7 million worldwide, the movie earned five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally).

Harris' 1999 novel, Hannibal, was also made into a movie and released in 2001. The movie once again featured Lecter (Hopkins) and Starling (played by Julianne Moore, instead of Foster, who decided to pass). Directed by Ridley Scott, Hannibal earned about $351.7 million gross from movie theaters worldwide, which was $79 million more than the worldwide gross of its predecessor. This was despite the fact that Harris had allowed the controversial ending of the novel to be changed for the film version. (See the movie's page, and the pages for Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, for more details.)

In 2004, Bantam Books signed Harris to an eight-figure, two-book contract. The first of these books, Hannibal Rising, chronicles the early life of the young Hannibal from age 6 to 20. The novel will shed more light on the circumstances of the death of his family during World War II, with a focus on Dr. Lecter's memories of his younger sister, Mischa. It is due for release on 5 December 2006. As of yet, no details have been released on Harris' sixth novel.