Hodder was born in Auburn, California in 1955. Early in his career during an interview, he offered to show the interviewer and her cameraman a fire stunt, which went horribly wrong, leaving him with 2nd and 3rd degree burns over much of his upper body. It was because of these burns that he was initially selected to portray Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (see ‘To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story’ section further down this page), a role that would eventually go to Robert Englund with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. He was the first actor to portray Jason Voorhees more than once, in a total of four consecutive movies from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood to Jason X. He portrayed horror icon Leatherface through the stunt work of the 1990 film Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and played Freddy Krueger’s clawed glove hand at the ending scene of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. He also acted as a police guard in Jason Goes to Hell. He also appeared in an episode of The Arsenio Hall Show to promote Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, in costume as Jason.

Although he offered to reprise his role as Jason Voorhees in the 2003 film Freddy vs. Jason, director Ronny Yu replaced Hodder with 6’5″ Canadian stuntman Ken Kirzinger. The switch created controversy among fans of the series and has been credited to several rumors, including Kirzinger’s location in Canada and his height compared to Robert Englund, the actor who portrayed Freddy Krueger, while Yu himself stated that it was New Line Cinema’s idea to do so. Though Hodder still expresses resentment over not being chosen, he is still good friends with Kirzinger and Englund. In 2011 Hodder wrote, along with author Michael Aloisi, his autobiography Unmasked: The True Story of the World’s Most Prolific Cinematic Killer. This was in 2014 turned into a Webseries, which was released as The Killer & I. down.

Hodder co-wrote an autobiography with author Mike Aloisi. The book is about his life and experience in the film industry and was released on October 1, 2011.

Hodder portrayed Grawesome Crutal in the old-school slasher film, Muck and its sequel Muck: Feast of Saint Patrick. He co-starred with Doug Jones and Michael McShane in the horror comedy film Love in the Time of Monsters. In March 2015, he was part of Adam Green’s ArieScope webseries Adam Green’s Scary Sleepover.