Freddy Lounds

Freddy Lounds
Hannibal Lecter character
Three on-screen versions of Freddy Lounds (clockwise from top left): Stephen Lang, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lara Jean Chorostecki.
Created by	Thomas Harris
Portrayed by	Stephen Lang (Manhunter) Philip Seymour Hoffman (Red Dragon) Lara Jean Chorostecki (Hannibal)
Information
Gender	Male (novel, films), female (TV series)
Occupation	Tabloid journalist
Nationality	American

Freddy Lounds (or Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds) is a fictional character in the Hannibal Lecter series, created by author Thomas Harris. Lounds first appears in the 1981 novel Red Dragon as a foil to protagonist Will Graham who is ultimately murdered by primary antagonist Francis Dolarhyde.

Harris describes Lounds as "lumpy and ugly and small", with "buck teeth", and whose "rat eyes had the sheen of spit on asphalt". In terms of personality, Harris further describes Lounds as having "the longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego", sharpened by frustrated ambition:

He had worked in straight journalism for ten years when he realized that no one would ever send him to the White House. He saw that his publishers would wear his legs out, use him until it was time for him to become a broken-down old drunk manning a dead-end desk, drifting inevitably toward cirrhosis or a mattress fire.
They wanted the information he could get, but they didn't want Freddy. They paid him top scale, which is not very much money if you have to buy women. They patted his back and told him he had a lot of balls and they refused to put his name on a parking place.

Resentful of this treatment, Lounds goes into tabloid journalism, receiving much higher pay and better treatment for writing popular but factually questionable news stories. Lounds has been characterized by reviewers as a film noir throwback:

Noir tropes appear again concerning the character of Freddy Lounds, a sleazy journalist that's too good for the trashy job he's doing, Lounds is burned by ambition and by desire for vindication in front of those colleagues that look down upon his tabloid-related work. Everything in the character of Lounds, from his disregard for truth masquerading as desire to serve the public, down to his stripper girl-friend, comes straight from the rain-soaked and neon-lighted alleys of a generic 1950s noir downtown, and Freddy Lounds is certainly the most traditional noir character in the novel.

Lounds is also said to represent "the vulgarian who does not believe in anything except his own career; he does not understand the idealistic insanity of Dolarhyde or Lecter or the idealistic sanity of Graham". The death of Lounds is reflected as a consequence of his having only "a modicum of understanding" of people with desires unlike his own. As a tabloid photographer, it is also through Lounds that Harris "introduces a theme important to the three novels, the use of film and various optical apparatus to spy upon victims, because the antagonists of the novels need distance". Through photojournalism, Lounds publicly highlights Graham's role in the investigation, thereby making Graham himself a target of the killer, and also conveying to Graham's wife and stepson the dangerous world in which he has involved himself.