Culture
How a hockey goalie mask designer helped make Hannibal Lecter an all-time villain — and Halloween costume
Ed Cubberly had never heard of Anthony Hopkins when he received a phone call from Kathleen Gerlach, the assistant costume designer on a movie he knew nothing about. It was 1989, and the film version of “The Silence of the Lambs” was two years from becoming a critical and commercial sensation.
Cubberly, a full-time nurse at the time, living in Bayonne, New Jersey, had a side business making masks for NHL goalies from 1988 to 2000. Mike Richter, Frank Pietrangelo and Mark Fitzpatrick were among the players who wore his products.
So how did he get drawn in to help create one of film’s all-time villains?
At one point in the late 1980s, Cubberly left a business card at Gerry Cosby & Co. Sporting Goods in Manhattan. Not long after, members of the “The Silence of the Lambs” prop department went to the shop looking for a mask. They walked away with Cubberly’s contact information.
Gerlach reached out to Cubberly about making a mask — not for hockey but for what would become a classic scene in the movie. And thus began Cubberly’s lone foray into film and his connection to Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, whom the American Film Institute ranks as the No. 1 movie villain of all time.
“My 15 minutes of fame,” Cubberly says now. “I guess it turned out OK.”
Midway through “Silence of the Lambs,” Lecter speaks to a senator while strapped to a gurney. He is a serial killer notorious for eating his victims, but he’s also a brilliant psychiatrist with information that could help catch another serial killer, Buffalo Bill. As he speaks to the senator, whose daughter has been kidnapped by Buffalo Bill, he wears a straight jacket and a fiberglass mask that covers his nose and the lower half of his face.
There’s an opening over his mouth covered by three metal bars — a measure against a potential cannibalistic outburst.
That was Cubberly’s finished product: the most famous mask he ever made, with all due respect to the Statue of Liberty mask that New York Rangers goalie Mike Richter wore in the 1994 Stanley Cup Final.
Mike Richter’s Statue of Liberty mask was designed but not painted by Ed Cubberly. (Al Bello / Getty Images)
“It was kind of devious and scary looking,” says Cubberly, now 67. “It fit the scene perfectly.”
When enlisting Cubberly’s help, Gerlach gave him a description of the scene. Cubberly came up with the concept in only a few minutes, using a Sharpie to draw the design on a picture of one of his old masks. He interpreted Gerlach’s instructions as instructions to give Lecter a muzzle, which led to the mouth covering. He also added a pair of holes over the nostrils.
Cubberly was in contact with Gerlach and future Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood throughout the process. At one point, they asked what he was thinking for the mask’s color. Cubberly suggested keeping the fiberglass’s greenish-tan shade. It would look like something that could have been made in jail, he told them. Director Jonathan Demme loved the idea, Cubberly recalls.
“I was just trying to get out of painting the thing,” he says with a chuckle.
Cubberly never met Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance. The film’s prop crew mailed him a plaster mold of the actor’s face, which he still has. Cubberly sculpted clay over the mold, then built the fiberglass mask over the clay. The process took only a couple of days.
The costume department had Hopkins try out different types of masks before filming. One looked like a beekeeper’s mask. Others were more cage-like. Cubberly’s design proved most effective.
“It looked nothing like any of the other masks,” he says.
The scene is similarly unique — and tense. Dramatic string music plays as Lecter is wheeled forward, and Hopkins makes piercing eye contact with the senator as he toys with her throughout the conversation.
Cubberly doesn’t watch many movies, but he and his wife went to “The Silence of the Lambs” when it came out in theaters. He didn’t know exactly when his mask would make an appearance. The second it did, he jumped from his seat and let out a cheer.
The other patrons hissed at him to sit down.
“I made that mask for the movie!” he told them.
No one in the theater believed him. Why would they think the mask came from New Jersey?
Cubberly, who now lives in Frenchtown, New Jersey, received $400 in payment for the mask. He also maintains copyright over the design. That’s gotten him some extra cash over the years. He’s signed contracts with Halloween costume companies allowing them to reproduce the mask.
Billy Crystal wore the original while hosting the Oscars in 1992, making a joke that he looked like the goalie from the Screen Actors Guild hockey team.
Cubberly hasn’t seen the original in person since he shipped it from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, where most of the movie was filmed.
“It’s a question I get all the time,” he says. “I have no idea where it is.”
He does, however, have a gift from the man who wore it. After making the mask, he asked the film’s prop crew if he could get something signed by Hopkins. They granted the request, mailing him a photo of Hopkins wearing the mask. He keeps the photo framed on his wall.
“To Eddie,” Hopkins scrawled at the bottom of the picture, “All good wishes — and be very careful on dark nights, Eddie, because I’ll be waiting and watching.”
Hopkins signed the picture twice: once with his own name and once with the name of the character Cubberly helped give his iconic look: Dr. Lecter.
(Top photo: Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images)
new video loaded: The A.I. threat to audiobooks
By Alexandra Alter, Léo Hamelin and Laura Salaberry
May 20, 2026
At 53, and after more than a decade in the industry, things are happening for the romance writer Kennedy Ryan that were not on her bingo card.
The most recent: a first look deal with Universal Studio Group that will allow her to develop various projects, including a Peacock adaptation of her breakout 2022 novel “Before I Let Go,” the first book in her Skyland trilogy, which considers love and friendship among three Black women in a community inspired by contemporary Atlanta.
With a TV series in development, Ryan — who published her debut novel in 2014 and subsequently self-published — joins Tia Williams and Alanna Bennett at a table with few other Black romance writers.
“What I am most excited about is the opportunity to identify other authors’ work, especially marginalized authors, and to shepherd those projects from book to screen,” said Ryan, a former journalist. (Kennedy Ryan is a pen name.) “We are seeing an explosion in romance adaptations right now, and I want to see more Black, brown and queer authors.”
Her latest novel, “Score,” is set to publish on Tuesday. It’s the second volume in her Hollywood Renaissance series, after “Reel,” about an actress with a chronic illness who falls for her director on the set of a biopic set during the Harlem Renaissance. The new book follows a screenwriter and a musician, once romantically involved, working on the same movie.
In a recent interview (edited and condensed for clarity), Ryan shared the highs and lows of commercial success; her commitment to happy endings; and her north star. Spoiler: It isn’t what readers think of her books on TikTok.
Your work has been categorized as Black romance, but how do you see yourself as a writer?
I see myself as a romance writer. I think the season that I’m in right now, I’m most interested in Black romance, and that’s what I’ve been writing for the last few years. It doesn’t mean that I won’t write anything else, because I don’t close those doors. But the timeline we’re in is one where I really want to promote Black love, Black art and Black history.
What intrigued you about the period of history you capture in the Hollywood Renaissance series?
I’ve always been fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance and the years immediately following. It felt like a natural era to explore when I was examining overlooked accomplishments by Black creatives. I loved the art as agitation and resistance seen in the lives of people like James Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston, but also figures like Josephine Baker, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, who people may not think of as “revolutionary.” The fact that they were even in those spaces was its own act of rebellion.
What about that period feels resonant now?
The series celebrates Black art and Black history and love at a time when I see all three under attack. Our art is being diminished and our history is being erased before our very eyes. I don’t hold back on the relationship between what I see going on in the world and the books I write.
How does this moment in your career feel?
I didn’t get my first book deal until I was in my 40s, so I think this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m wanting to make the most of it, not just for myself, but for other people, and I think the temptation is to believe that it will all go away because that’s my default.
Why would it all go away?
Part of it is because we — my family, my husband and I — have had some really hard times, especially early in our marriage when my son was diagnosed with autism, my husband lost his job, and we experienced hard times financially. I’ll never forget that.
When I say it could all go away, I mean things change, the industry changes, what people respond to changes, what people buy and want to consume changes. So I don’t assume that what I am doing is always going to be something that people want.
Why are you so firmly committed to defending the “happy ending” in romance novels?
It is integral to the definition of the genre that it ends happily. Some people will say it’s just predictable every one ends happily. I am fine with that, living in a world that is constantly bombarding us with difficulty, with hurt, with challenge.
I write books that are deeply curious about the human condition. In “Score,” the heroine has bipolar disorder, she’s bisexual, there’s all of this intersectionality. For me, there is no safer genre landscape to unpack these issues and these conditions because I know there is guaranteed joy at the end.
You have a pretty active TikTok account. How do you engage with reviews and commentary on the platform about you or the genre?
First of all, I believe that reader spaces are sacred. Sometimes I see authors get embroiled with readers who have criticized them. I never ever comment on critical reviews. I definitely do see the negative. It’s impossible for me not to, but I just kind of ignore it. I let it roll off.
How does this apply to being a very visible Black author in romance?
I am very cognizant of this space that I’m in right now, which is a blessing, and I don’t take it for granted. I see a lot of discourse online where people are like, “Kennedy’s not the only one,” “Why Kennedy?,” “There should be more Black authors.” And I’m like, Oh my God, I know that. I am constantly looking for ways to amplify other Black authors. I want to hold the door open and pull them along.
How do you define success for yourself at this point?
I have a little bit of a mission statement: I want to write stories that will crater in people’s hearts and create transformational moments. Whether it’s television or publishing, am I sticking true to what I feel like is one of the things I was put on this earth to do? I’m a P.K., or preacher’s kid. We’re always thinking about purpose. And for me, how do I fit into this genre? What is my lane? What is my legacy? Which sounds so obnoxious, you know, but legacy is very important to me.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights the screen adaptations of popular books for middle-grade and young adult readers. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. Scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.
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