Gary Hansbrough
as
Captain Moreland

Gary Hansbrough was working on his Bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, when the acting bug bit him. He was an intern at the White Bird Clinic, part of the crisis team called "the bummer squad." The clinic was short on funding, so Hansbrough organized a film festival to raise funds for the clinic. He handled all the promotion for the festival, which showed over 200 films and only lost money on one. Then the film crew arrived on campus to shoot "Animal House" and Gary was recruited as an extra to play a Delta house member and that planted the seeds for his future acting career.

Since "Animal House" Gary has performed in a number of small films, including the short The Newspaper" which was shown at the Denver International Film Festival in 1999 and and Moosie, a feature length movie by Sunstone Communications. But the biggest feature film that Gary has been involved since college is Dragon and the Hawk. In Dragon and the Hawk, Gary plays the Hawk's boss, Captain Moreland. Moreland won't believe there is anything to the connections that Hawk finds between her sister's death and Dragon's missing sister. He orders her to drop the case.

"It was different," Gary said, "Being a guy in charge and in control, totally shutdown and macho, away from my normal personality."
"I really liked working with Barbara," Gary Hansbrough said of Barbara Gehring who played Hawk. "She's so spontaneous, really open and forgiving. Good acting is about connecting with your partner." In the movie they connect and you can feel the tension between the characters as Hawk tries to convince Moreland and he resists. "You can't keep getting personally involved in these cases," Moreland says, "You're young but in a few years it'll start ripping your guts out."

Gary also works at Presbyterian-St. Lukes in the alcohol and drug detox unit on weekends. He meets a diverse group of people that way. He finds his psychology background very useful as an actor. "It allows me to be detached from crazy situations, all the distractions you might find on a set. It helps me understand the motivations and emotions of characters. Very useful for an actor." But it is not always possible to be completely detached. Some of Gary's clients have very strong emotional experiences that they need to share with someone. It is something he takes away with him as part of his own emotional stock and it deepens his experience and understanding of the emotional process and gives him more to bring to his acting.

Gary would like to do more films in the future. "Films that make people think would make me feel best about being involved," he said. "I would like to play a therapist or client in a movie." Gary would also love to do a comedy though he hasn't done much comedy work. He thinks it would be a challenge and quotes Peter O' Toole as saying, "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."