Marilyn Burns: Horror Film Actress (1949–2014)
By: Dillon Savage
Published: December 11, 2024
Updated: February 2, 2026
Mary Lynn Ann “Marilyn” Burns, actress, was born on May 7, 1949, in Erie, Pennsylvania, to Mary I. and Wilbur E. Burns. She was raised in Houston and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. Burns was passionate about acting from a young age. In 1971 she earned a bachelor’s degree in drama from the University of Texas at Austin. After college she worked for the Texas Film Commission.
Burns made her first film appearance in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970), which was also the film debut of Shelley Duvall. She was cast in Lovin’ Molly (1974) in what would have been her first credited role but was replaced by Susan Sarandon before filming began. Burns remained with the production as a stand-in. It was during filming that she first crossed paths with Tobe Hooper. Burns starred in Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) in a career-defining role. Produced on a shoestring budget with an inexperienced cast and crew, the independent horror film was an unexpected box office success and achieved cult status. Burns’s character, Sally Hardesty, the sole survivor among a group of young people who run afoul of a deranged family of bloodthirsty cannibals during a road trip in rural Texas, became a prototypical example of the “final girl” character in horror cinema and established Burns as a horror movie “scream queen.”
After Chain Saw, Burns portrayed Linda Kasabian, a follower of Charles Manson, in Helter Skelter (1976), an Emmy-nominated television mini-series about the infamous Manson Family killings in Los Angeles. She appeared in Hooper’s next film, Eaten Alive (1976) and starred in the horror films Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1981) and Future-Kill (1985). In the latter film, she starred along fellow Chain Saw actor Edwin Neal. Burns also had roles in subsequent entries in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. In 2009 she was inducted into the International Horror & Sci-Fi Hall of Fame. Her final film roles were Sacrament (2014) and In a Madman’s World, release posthumously in 2017. Marilyn Burns died on August 5, 2014, in Houston.
Bibliography:
John Bloom, “They Came. They Sawed,” Texas Monthly, November 2004. Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2014. Internet Movie Database: Marilyn Burns (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122782/), accessed November 13, 2024.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Dillon Savage, “Burns, Mary Lynn Ann [Marilyn],” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/burns-mary-lynn-ann-marilyn.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- December 11, 2024
- February 2, 2026
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