The original "Scream Queen" Marilyn Burns has died at the age of 65. According to reports, Burns was found unresponsive in her Texas home on Tuesday, July 5. The actress is best known for her role as Sally Hardesty in the 1974 horror classic, "Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
"She was found unresponsive by a family member [Tuesday] morning in her Houston, Texas, area home," her rep told E! News. "Her family asks for privacy at this time. Further details will be released later."
A cause of death has not been determined and an autopsy will be performed. After starring in "Texas Chain Saw Massacre," Hardesty went on to take roles in other scary movies including "Eaten Alive" in 1977, "Kiss Daddy Goodbye" in 1981 and "Future-Kill" in 1985.
Shortly before she died, Hardesty did an interview with Jacob Hall from ScreenCrush.com and revealed some surprising details about being on set of the film. During the interview, the actress was asked how it was working on the horror film in the Texas heat and Hardesty revealed that the movie almost didn't make it to theaters.
"The van was suffocating. Tedious. Hot miserable. We were traveling with five actors and the camera guy and sound and director and continuity guy. All of us in this van, going 15 miles an hour, trying not to make any noise. Just crawling along as they kept changing the script. We'd stop to sit on the side of the road when they decided that the lines weren't working. That was the first couple weeks of shooting," she told ScreenCrush. "It was real hot and miserable.
Hardesty said things were so bad on set that she had to try and keep her cast members from quitting.
"I picked up a couple of them on the way to set just to make sure they'd show! Nobody except me thought it was going to get done," Burns recalled. "I'm sure Tobe [Hooper] and Kim [Henkel] did. I was determined to see it on the screen. I could always envision that film on screen. I always knew it was going to come to the theaters despite the odds. And despite the producers' thoughts."
"Everyone wanted to forget about it after the misery of the whole shoot, listening to that agonizing chainsaw, smelling of all the smells, watching the decay of rotting chicken on set," she continued. "It was disgusting. It was miserable. Each different set-up we went to was a different kind of challenge. The reason so much of it looks so real is because it was."
You can check more of Marilyn Burns interview with ScreenCrush here.
