Gunnar Milton Hansen (March 4, 1947 – November 7, 2015) was an Icelandic-born American actor and author best known for playing the mentally impaired cannibal Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

Early life

Hansen was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, to Icelander Skúli Hansen, a dentist, and Norwegian Sigrid Hansen. He moved to the United States with his mother and brother when he was five years old. He lived in Maine until age eleven, when his family moved to Austin, Texas, where he attended Austin High School and the University of Texas at Austin. He majored in English and mathematics as an undergraduate and then went to graduate school in Scandinavian Studies and English.

Career

His first job out of high school was as a computer operator before he began theater work during college. He was also a football player during high school and for a while a bar bouncer. In 1973, just after finishing graduate school, Hansen heard that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was being filmed in Austin and decided to audition. He got the part of Leatherface, the masked killer in the movie. After writing (and occasionally editing) for magazines and writing books, Hansen returned to acting in 1988, appearing in the horror spoof Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. He acted in 20 films thereafter, including Texas Chainsaw 3D as one of the Sawyers. He state that he considered his later acting as a side project and continued to write books. He also wrote film scripts and wrote and directed documentary films. His final film project was a cameo in Death House, which he co-wrote with Harrison Smith. Hansen was also an author; his nonfiction travel memoir, Islands at the Edge of Time; A Journey to America's Barrier Islands, was published in 1993. In 2013 he wrote the nonfiction book Chain Saw Confidential about the making of and reception for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Death

Hansen died at his home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, of pancreatic cancer on November 7, 2015, at the age of 68.

Filmography

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