Torture's elementary to Watson

British actress Emily Watson, who stars in the new Hannibal Lecter film Red Dragon, is used to playing tortured characters.

She appears as a blind woman who falls in love with a serial killer in the new film which also stars Anthony Hopkins and is a prequel to The Silence Of The Lambs.

Watson also played a destitute mother in Angela’s Ashes and a cellist suffering from multiple sclerosis in Hilary and Jackie.

Asked why she likes to take on such roles, the 35-year-old tells People magazine: “I’m a total fruitcake. It’s exhilarating to play someone who is in such misery.”

She adds: “The first thing I did when I got the role in Red Dragon was go out to dinner with my husband – actor Jack Walters – and we actually ordered fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

In Silence Of The Lambs, Lecter refers to eating someone’s liver washed down with fava beans and a nice Chianti.