Icelandic-American actor and writer (1947-2015). He was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and moved to Maine with his mother and brother when he was just five years old. They moved to Austin, Texas when he was 11. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in English and mathematics. At graduate school, he studied Scandinavian Studies and English.
After getting his graduate degree in 1973, Hansen was still knocking around Austin when he heard that a low-budget movie was going to be filmed in the area, so he auditioned and scored the part of Leatherface, the Big Bad in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Now you might expect that for a role as a lumbering masked killer, he'd practice making growling and grunting noises, learn how to run a chainsaw, and declare his character research complete. But Hansen read the script, decided that Leatherface had a general developmental or intellectual disability and had never learned to speak properly, then set out for a visit to a special needs school so he could watch how students there moved and spoke.
(Must've been an interesting inquiry to the school: "Good day, I'm an actor who will be playing the part of a violent serial murderer. May I observe your students?")
The film was a notoriously difficult shoot. The main shooting location was located near Round Rock, Texas during a brutally hot and humid summer. And since the crew had to carefully watch their budget and avoid renting high-cost equipment for lengthy periods, it was decided that the cast and crew would shoot seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day. And they had one and only one Leatherface costume. Hansen later said they were afraid to wash the outfit because of fears the laundry would lose it, or that washing it would cause it to change color. So as he wore the mask and heavy canvas butcher's apron, it continued smelling worse and worse -- Hansen said it actually started to ferment -- so in addition to wearing the heavy hot costume every day in the sweltering Texas heat, the cast and crew also stopped letting him stand in line with them for dinner because his stench was so revolting.
The set of the film was also much more dangerous for the cast than most other films -- director Tobe Hooper said every member of the cast had been injured in some way before the end of filming. And Hansen was responsible for at least one of those injuries. During the dinner scene -- which was already highly stressful because it was going to be one long marathon over-24-hour-long shoot -- the crew wasn't able to get the stage blood out of its tube for the bit where Grandpa is fed some of Sally's blood from a cut on her finger. Frustrated by the long delay, Hansen took a razor and actually cut actress Marilyn Burns' finger deeply for the sake of getting some usable blood for the scene. Hansen himself was almost gravely injured or killed when he fell while carrying the running chainsaw -- the blade hit the ground mere inches from Hansen's head.
After "Texas Chainsaw," Hansen returned to the screen rarely. The movies were generally low-budget horror flicks, and Hansen was hired for his connection to the horror classic. In several of them, he wielded a chainsaw -- horror fans like our fanservice as much as anyone else. He was pleased to get the checks from the movies, but he considered acting to be a side gig for his real vocation -- writing.
Hansen wrote and sometimes edited for magazines and books, as well as writing film scripts and writing and directing documentary films. In 1980, he wrote an article for Yankee Magazine entitled "The Unfinished Flight of the White Bird," which is credited with renewing interest in L'Oiseau Blanc, a French biplane that disappeared in 1927 while attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight between Paris and New York City. He wrote a well-regarded travel memoir, "Islands at the Edge of Time: A Journey to America's Barrier Islands" in 1993. And in 2013, he wrote "Chain Saw Confidential," a nonfiction work on the making, release, and legacy of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
One of the last movies Hansen appeared in was "Texas Chainsaw 3D' in 2013, where he had a cameo as Boss Sawyer. He died at his home in Maine of pancreatic cancer in 2015. After his death, a film he'd written called "Death House" was released in 2017. He did have a cameo in that, too; in fact, the film was stuffed full of horror icons, which is entirely how Hansen had scripted it.
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