The 87-year-old star won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 film and said Foster, who played FBI trainee Clarice Starling, kept her distance because she was "scared" of him.
Hopkins writes in his memoir We Did OK, Kid: "(Foster and I) mostly kept away from each other. Then, on our last day of shooting, we had lunch. It was freezing cold in Pittsburgh. Jodie put down her sandwich and said she had to confess something: she'd been scared of me."
The legendary Welsh actor admitted he was also scared of Foster as the pair made light of their isolation.
"We had a big hug, and we both admitted to feeling a strange sense of distance during the shoot, due no doubt to the power of that script, which had us playing a cat-and-mouse game," he said.Â
"Since then, we've always greeted each other with great warmth."
Foster - who won the Best Actress Oscar for her role - revealed she was frightened of Hopkins during the making of the film and believes her fear stemmed from techniques employed by director Jonathan Demme.
"The movie didn't scare me, but Anthony Hopkins scared me," the 62-year-old actress said.
"You'll notice, if you look at the movie again... instead of the person looking at the person off-screen, that the actors are actually looking down the lens. And that means I am there, but way behind the camera, and I'm just a voice; he can't see me. And the same is true on my side.
"So when I'm doing scenes with Dr Lecter, I just hear this disembodied, scary voice, but I don't actually see his face. I have to look into the camera and pretend that he's in the camera."
Hopkins said he "instinctively" knew how to play Lecter due to his inner "devil".
"I knew the character instantly. I instinctively sensed how to play Hannibal. I have the devil in me. We all have the devil in us. I know what scares people."
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