UNITED KINGDOM: Hannibal Lecter is no stranger, but how did he become who he is? - "Hannibal Rising" tells all about how the infamous serial killer came to be who he is

The brilliant, charming, and evil Hannibal Lecter is possibly the movieworld's most famous anti-hero. After a series of successful blockbusters casting Anthony Hopkins as the serial killer, "Hannibal Rising" reaches way back to Lecter's childhood to explore how he became the person we know. The film casts young French actor Garpard Ulliel as Hannibal, next to Chinese actress Gong Li and British actor Rhys Ifans. Ulliel said he was well aware of treading in Hopkins' footsteps. "I knew it was very risky, first of all to work in English then work on such a complex character and also I knew there would be so many expectations from the audience," he said. Lecter's story begins in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. For many, the conflict of nations turned in to a conflict of survival . A young Hannibal watches from only steps away how his parents violently die, leaving his young sister in his care. The horrors of that moment soon pale in comparison with the atrocities he is forced to witness and which will change him forever. Alone and without any means of support he is forced to live in a Soviet orphanage that has been set up in his very own home - a castle that used to belong to his parents. He flees to Paris to find out his uncle has died but is welcomed by his beautiful and mysterious Japanese widow, played by Gong Li. But her kindness cannot soothe him. Showing a cunning aptitude for science he is accepted into medical school where he polishes his skills and is provided with the tools needed to hunt down the war criminals that torment him day and night. This quest will ignite an insatiable lust within a serial killer who was not born, but made. "This character is much younger and hasn't experienced the same things so he is way more naive and innocent and in a way I was kind of free to create my own Hannibal Lecter , I still tried to pick a few details from Anthony Hopkins' performance to mix my own recipe in a way," said Ulliel. Director Peter Webber who cast Ulliel as Hannibal said: "The Hannibal that everyone knows and loves or fears is Hopkins and we're never gonna replace Hopkins in the public affection, this is a different film , many years before, a much younger character. Hopkins could of course never play a twenty-year-old man because I think he's got a good few years on him now, I think he's approaching seventy. So I'm sure sadly it'll be the last time that we see Hopkins as Hannibal but what we're hoping to do is create a new and entertaining film with an actor who I think is very compelling." For the part, Ulliel was given voice and movement lessons and even visited autopsy class in Prague. Whereas some might have shuddered at the thought, Ulliel welcomed it and said he found the experience very interesting: "It's a bit weird when you enter a room with all of these dead corpses but then it's just fascinating to look inside the human body, touch the different organs and talk with the doctors, very nice," he said. "Well you know you don't have any blood - the thing I usually have a problem with is looking at blood, but you don't have any blood so it's different, and the body were so destroyed, open and torn apart that they didn't look real to me, I couldn't imagine that those bodies were real." "Hannibal Rising" opens in cinemas across the UK on February 9.

ITN Source | February 8, 2007

Tags:. .destroyed. .audience. .approaching. .alone. .recipe