Van Hansis

Hansis was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, but moved to Greenfield in the third grade when his mother became a principal in the Gill-Montague Regional School District. He attended Four Corners School and later the Greenfield Center School. Hansis began acting in theater camp as a child. He attended high school at a boarding school called Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, because, he says, he knew by then he wanted to be an actor "and it was a good school for that".

Hansis graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the School of Drama.Hansis appeared in the play The Laramie Project in Pittsburgh in 2002, and later worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts in productions including On the Razzle and The Witching Hour in 2005.