13 Facts About Gunnar Hansen

Gunnar Milton Hansen was an Icelandic-born American actor and author.

Gunnar Hansen played the mentally impaired cannibal Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Gunnar Hansen moved to the United States with his mother and brother when he was five years old.

Gunnar Hansen 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.

Gunnar Hansen majored in English and mathematics as an undergraduate and then went to graduate school in Scandinavian Studies and English.

Gunnar Hansen was a football player during high school and for a while a bar bouncer.

In 1973, just after finishing graduate school, Gunnar Hansen heard that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was being filmed in Austin and decided to audition.

Gunnar Hansen got the part of Leatherface, the masked killer in the movie.

Gunnar Hansen acted in 20 films thereafter, including Texas Chainsaw 3D as one of the Sawyers.

Gunnar Hansen wrote film scripts and wrote and directed documentary films.

Gunnar Hansen's final film project was a cameo in Death House, which he co-wrote with Harrison Smith.

Gunnar Hansen was an author; his nonfiction travel memoir, Islands at the Edge of Time; A Journey to America's Barrier Islands, was published in 1993.

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