It is stated that 'The 'Jame' on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct.' Gumb's mother, an aspiring actress, went into an alcoholic decline after her career failed to materialize, and Los Angeles County placed Gumb in a foster home when he was two. Gumb was born in California in 1948 or 1949. In the television series Clarice, he is portrayed by Simon Northwood.
In the film and the novel, he is a serial killer who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a 'woman suit' for himself. Jame Gumb (known by the nickname ' Buffalo Bill') is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he is played by Ted Levine. Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.