Gunnar Hansen

Overview

Born
March 4, 1947 · Reykjavik, Iceland
Died
November 7, 2015 · Northeast Harbor, Maine, USA (pancreatic cancer)
Birth name
Gunnar Milton Hansen
Nicknames
- Gunner
- Leatherface
Height
6′ 4″ (1.93 m)

Biography

Family

Parents
Relatives

Trademark

His iconic role of Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
Towering height and rotund frame.

Trivia

During the filming of the dinner scene towards the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Gunnar's character Leatherface was supposed to cut the finger of Marilyn Burns' character with a knife. Gunnar was having trouble working the fake-blood dispenser and was very fatigued by the heat and long hours of doing take after take, so unbeknown to everyone but him and Marilyn, he simply cut her for real, which is the take used in the film.
Was asked to reprise the role of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), but declined, claiming that he was insulted by the idea of the original 1974 film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), being remade.
Shaved his beard off for the role of Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). He never shaved it off again.
Said in a TV interview that he is so unlike his The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) character that when people who meet him learn that he played Leatherface, they often react in total shock.
After acting in the movie _Demon Lover, The (1977), he decided to quit acting and continue his dream of writing, but after being offered many jobs that he refused (including The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Eaten Alive (1976)) he decided that he could both be an actor and a writer.

Quotes

[on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)] I'm not totally enamored with the film. It is very, very good at what it is, a film that succeeds in really scaring the hell out of people. As to 'Chain Saw' being analogous to the breakdown of the American nuclear family and other lofty themes recently explored -- bunk! The movie was very effective because we broke some rules, a lot like Psycho (1960) did when the heroine is killed early in the film. There are no safe scenes in our film, no cuts or distractions to relieve the terror.
People have a very mistaken idea of me. They figure that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was the biggest thing that ever happened to me, that I was just off somewhere being rich, famous, signing autographs. I get crank calls in the middle of the night, guys making chainsaw noises, "v-v-vroom, v-v-vroom!," and telling me chainsaw jokes.
[on being cast as Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)] I never thought I had it in me. Just before production started, I was sitting in a drugstore, had nothing at all planned for the summer, heard about the casting call, and decided to try out on a lark. I was 26 years old, just out of graduate school, when I met Hooper [Tobe Hooper] and writer Kim Henkel. They asked me three questions before they hired me. "Are you a violent person? Are you crazy?" When I replied, "No, not more so than normal," they finally asked, "Can you do it?" "Sure, it's easy," I said. They loved the fact that I filled the doorway. Tobe Hooper said, "We'll put high heels on you and make you a little bigger."
[on his perception of Leatherface] Homicidal, brutal, a simple personality, but he's a real freak, a retarded maniac.
[on the character of Leatherface] They defined the character for me as someone who was severely mentally retarded and severely mentally disturbed. The idea was that there was really nothing behind the mask and that's how the character was created. You could never unmask him like Darth Vader, because if you were to take the mask off there would be nothing there. That is why you see him wearing different masks at different times. That is how he presented himself, but killing was the only thing he knew.