The character Levine played was a single lunatic with the special tics and quirks of that lunatic. There was nothing in the movie or in the character as written (in the movie or the novel) that suggested Buffalo Bill was meant to represent any group or to suggest that all trans people are deviants or killers. Has Anthony Hopkins said that he regretted playing Hannibal Lector because now we know that doctors aren’t really cannibals?

No, he hasn’t, because he’s not an idiot.

Actors play parts written by screenwriters and their performances are shaped by directors. In this respect they are like lawyers, who, I wrote only recently again, are not endorsing their clients’ character or positions when they represent them. Actors in a film bring their talents to a whole work in a manner that fits into someone else’s artistic vision. “Silence of the Lambs” was a horror/thriller, and had nothing to do with sexual politics. Anyone who criticizes Levine’s performance based on current day victim-mongering hyper-sensitivity (usually contrived for publicity) is engaging in the most indefensible presentism.

On her blog, Carol Marks writes of Levine’s woke whining, “Villains used to be allowed to be monstrous without representing a demographic. They used to be permitted to be male, disturbed, and dangerous without triggering a symposium. Now even fictional serial killers require sensitivity reviews.”

I’m not inclined to give Levine a pass because he’s responding to cultural pressure. The role of Buffalo Bill launched his career. It’s easy for him to say he “regrets” it now that he’s successful, but the truth is that his director, auteur Jonathan Demme, told him how to play the role, and if an unknown meat-puppet like Levine in 1991 had objected, someone else would have played the part, and Levine might be running a diner today. And he knows it. He doesn’t regret the role. He also doesn’t regret the career it led to giving him an estimated worth of 6 million dollars today.

Such flagrant virtue-signaling is obnoxious, hypocritical and pathetic.

But you know.

Actors.