American actor Gunnar Hansen, who essayed the role of the horrific killer Leatherface in Tobe Hooper’s seminal horror film “Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is dead. He was 68.

He breathed his last at his home in Maine on Saturday, following a battle with pancreatic cancer, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Of the famous role, he shared in 2013: "Anytime Leatherface was cutting on anything it had teeth. It was very dangerous. I had no idea how dangerous it was until later, after the movie came out, when I was living in the woods and chopping up wood to heat the house.

"He's extremely dangerous and deadly but he's not purely evil. There's some ambivalence about your feelings. Because the mask is expressionless, you never see the face, so you're looking at nothing. I imagined, if you took the mask off, that there would be no face there - in fact, that not only would there be no face, might be nothing at all. Just an empty black spot."

Despite his film credits, Hansen always maintained writing was his passion and he released a non-fiction book in 2013 followed by another novel about the making of the famous movie later that year.

Hansen is survived by his partner Betty Tower.