Martha Stewart dumped Sir Anthony Hopkins over Hannibal Lecter

No one person should be able to effortlessly entertain as Martha Stewart consistently does, but alas, the iconic entrepreneur and pop culture staple remains full of surprises.

Stewart, 80, visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show this week and played a game of "Two Truths and a Lie." As a result, she revealed that she once dated Sir Anthony Hopkins but dumped him because she "couldn't stop thinking of him as Hannibal Lecter."

"I have a big, scary house in Maine that's way by itself on 100 acres in the forest, and I couldn't even imagine taking Anthony Hopkins there," Stewart explained with a laugh. "I couldn't because all I could think of was him eating ... you know."

For the uninitiated, Hannibal Lecter is a fictional serial killer who ate his victims. The character originated in Thomas Harris' novels, beginning with Red Dragon in 1981, and then Hopkins in horror films The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon ('02). 

Hopkins won best actor at the 1992 Oscars for Silence of the Lambs, and more recently, the 84-year-old made history at last year's Academy Awards by winning best actor for his role in The Father.

This is far from the first time Stewart has discussed dating Hopkins.

"Do you want someone eating your brain while you are sitting in your beautiful dining room in Maine?" Stewart told Howard Stern way back in 2006 (h/t The New York Post). "I would have probably had a very nice relationship with Anthony Hopkins but I couldn’t get past the Lecter thing."

And she expressed the sentiment again with Meredith Vieira in 2014: