Laurence T. Fessenden (born March 23, 1963) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the founder of the New York-based independent film production company Glass Eye Pix. His writer/director credits include No Telling (written with Beck Underwood, 1991), Habit (1997), Wendigo (2001), and The Last Winter (written with Robert Leaver, 2006), which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He has also directed the television feature Beneath (2013), an episode of the NBC TV series Fear Itself (2008) entitled "Skin and Bones", and a segment of the anthology horror-comedy film The ABCs of Death 2 (2014). He is the writer, with Graham Reznick, of the BAFTA Award-winning Sony PlayStation video game Until Dawn. Films he has acted in include Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Broken Flowers (2005), I Sell the Dead (2009), Jug Face (2012), We Are Still Here (2015), In a Valley of Violence (2016), Like Me (2017), and The Dead Don't Die (2019), Brooklyn 45 (2023), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
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Early life
Fessenden was born in New York City. He attended St. Bernard's School, then Phillips Academy, from which he was expelled.
Career
Fessenden regards the old Universal Monsters as a substantial influence for him. As an actor, screenwriter, director and film editor, he has worked, in addition to feature films, on such television projects as the NBC horror anthology Fear Itself (2008), directing the episode "Skin and Bones". He wrote the screenplay of Orphanage (2007) with Guillermo del Toro, an English-language remake of El Orfanato.
Fessenden has worked as a mentor to young directors, such as Jim Mickle and Ti West. He has been a producer on projects including Ilya Chaiken's Liberty Kid (2007), Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008), James McKenney's Satan Hates You (2010), West's The House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011), Joe Maggio's The Last Rites of Joe May (2011), and Rick Alverson's The Comedy (2012). Under his low-budget horror banner ScareFlix, Fessenden has produced films including West's The Roost (2005) and Trigger Man (2007), Glenn McQuaid's I Sell the Dead (2008), Maggio's Bitter Feast (2010), and Mickle's Stake Land (2010). More recently he has produced for prolific horror auteur Mickey Keating with Darling (2015) and Psychopaths (2017).
As a character actor, Fessenden has appeared in numerous films, including Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Ti West's X (uncredited) and MaXXXine (2024), Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory (2000), Brad Anderson's Session 9 (2001) and Vanishing on 7th Street (2010), Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die (2019) and Broken Flowers (2005), Neil Jordan's The Brave One (2007), McQuaid's I Sell the Dead (2008) for which he won best actor at the Slamdance Film Festival; Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008), Mickle's Mulberry Street (2006) and Stake Land (2010), Joe Swanberg's All the Light in the Sky (2011), and Ted Geoghegan's We Are Still Here and Brooklyn 45 (2023). Fessenden also starred in the Sundance Film Festival picture River of Grass (1994), which was Reichardt's debut feature, and Margarita Happy Hour (2001) directed by Chaiken. He has appeared on television in Louie, The Strain, and as himself in National Geographic's Brain Games.
In 2010, Fessenden partnered with Glenn McQuaid to launch Tales from Beyond the Pale, a series of macabre audio dramas now available as a 47 episode podcast. In 2011, he released his third rock album with the band Just Desserts, an on-going partnership with songwriter Tom Laverack. In 2012, he executive produced and was interviewed in the documentary Birth of the Living Dead, which examines the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. In 2016, he produced, acted, and served as cinematographer in his son Jack's feature debut, Stray Bullets. The same year also saw Fessenden release a book titled Sudden Storm, A Wendigo Reader.
Filmography
Awards and honors
Awards
Won – 1997 Independent Spirit Award Someone to Watch Award (Habit)
Nominated – 1997 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director (Habit)
Nominated – 1997 Austin Film Festival Award for Best Feature Film (Habit)
Won – 1999 Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival Audience Award for Feature Film (Habit)
Won – 1999 Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival Award for Best Editing (Habit)
Won – 1999 Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival Award for Best Actor (Habit)
Won – 2001 Woodstock Film Festival Jury Prize for Best Feature Film (Wendigo)
Nominated – 2003 Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Screenplay (Wendigo)
Won – 2007 Sitges Film Festival Maria Honorary Award (Himself)
Nominated – 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature Film (Wendy and Lucy)
Won – 2009 AFI Award for Movie of the Year (Wendy and Lucy)
Nominated – 2010 Piaget Spirit Award for Producing (Himself)
Won – 2010 Slamdance Special Jury Mention for Best Performance (I Sell the Dead)
Nominated – 2010 Independent Spirit Award Producers Award (I Sell the Dead and The House of the Devil)
Honors
2011 – Inducted into the Fangoria Hall of Fame
2011 – Total Film Icon of Horror at the London FrightFest Film Festival
2024 – Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Leviathan Award
