Breeds Apart

As the titular star of Clarice, Rebecca Breeds is used to chasing down a serious psychopath. But off-screen? She’d rather strut in her Manolos, thank you.

- By Mara Reinstein

On a typical day Rebecca Breeds logs 15 hours on the Toronto set of Clarice. Then she arrives to a dark apartment, changes into her fluffiest bathrobe, plops into bed, falls asleep, and starts all over again.

And she loves, loves, loves it.

“Every morning on the drive to the studio, I always take a moment of gratitude,” the actress says. “To bleed your soul into something and to know that people are responding so well to it is one of the most satisfying things. Gosh, I’m so blessed to be doing what I’ve always dreamed of.”

Never mind that she stars as the titular character in a psychological thriller so creepy and haunting that it’s basically the stuff of nightmares. Although the hit series—which premiered in February— is set one year after studious FBI trainee Clarice Starling saved the day in the 1991 classic The Silence of the Lambs, viewers have learned that the lambs are still screaming inside her head. Now part of a special task force specializing in violent crimes, Clarice has tried to reconcile her past traumas as she chases down the mysterious villain responsible for killing a group of female whistleblowers from a pharmaceutical clinical trial. (Smallscreen vets Michael Cudlitz, Kal Penn, and Devyn A. Tyler play her cohorts.)