Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins (1932 April 4 – 1992 September 12) was an Academy Award-nominated American stage and screen actor best known for his role as the serial killer Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

He was the son of American stage and film actor Osgood Perkins and Janet Esseltyn Rane.

Perkins' first movie was The Actress (1953); he received an Academy Award nomination for his role in his second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956). After other acclaimed performances both in film and on Broadway, he starred as Norman Bates in the 1960 film Psycho. Many people feel he deserved to win an Oscar for this role, but he was not nominated. Following the success of Psycho, he did have a decade-long successful career in Europe, where many fans did not associate Perkins with the typecasting image of Norman Bates.

Perkins went on to create a critically-lauded portrayal of Joseph K. in Orson Welles' The Trial (1962) a cinematic adaptation of the novel by Franz Kafka. Upon returning to America, he took the role of a disturbed young murderer in Pretty Poison (1968), which served to affect the rest of his career. He starred in the sequels and prequel to Psycho, including Psycho II, Psycho III (which he directed) and Psycho IV: The Beginning. He also played a few memorable characters, such as the chaplain in Catch-22 (1970). Despite these successes, most of his later work was made-for-TV movies.

Perkins also co-wrote, with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the screenplay for the 1973 film The Last of Sheila, for which they received a 1974 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.

Among his Broadway credits are the Frank Loesser musical Greenwillow (1960) and Bernard Slade's 1979 play Romantic Comedy opposite Mia Farrow.

Perkins's life was meticulously documented in the biography Anthony Perkins: Split Image by Charles Winecoff (Alyson Books, 2006).

Personal life

Perkins was bisexual, having had affairs with a number of men, including 1950s and 60s film star Tab Hunter, dancer Rudolf Nureyev, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale, with whom Perkins had a six-year relationship prior to his marriage to Berry Berenson. He claimed to have been exclusively homosexual until his late 30s, when he met actress Victoria Principal.

Perkins died in 1992 of complications from AIDS, at age 60.

His elder son, Osgood Perkins, credited as Oz Perkins, also is an actor, and his younger son, Elvis Perkins, is a musician.

One day before the ninth anniversary of his death, Perkins' widow, Berenson, died on American Airlines Flight 11, the flight that was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Quote

I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.

Filmography

• The Actress (1953)
• Friendly Persuasion (1956)
• Fear Strikes Out (1957)
• The Lonely Man (1957)
• The Tin Star (1957)
• Desire Under the Elms (1958)
• This Angry Age (1958)
• The Matchmaker (1958)
• Green Mansions (1959)
• On the Beach (1959)
• Tall Story (1960)
• Psycho (1960)
• Goodbye Again (1961)
• Phaedra (1962)
• Five Miles to Midnight (1962)
• The Trial (1962)
• The Sword and the Balance (1963)
• Agent 38-24-36 (1964)
• The Fool Killer (1965)
• Is Paris Burning? (1966)
• Evening Primrose (1966)
• The Champagne Murders (1967)
• Pretty Poison (1968)
• Catch-22 (1970)
• WUSA (1970)
• How Awful About Allan (1970)
• Ten Days' Wonder (1971)
• Someone Behind the Door (1971)
• Play It As It Lays (1972)
• The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
• Lovin' Molly (1974)
• Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
• Mahogany (1975)
• Remember My Name (1978)
• First, You Cry (1978)
• Les Misérables (1978)
• Winter Kills (1979)
• Twice a Woman (1979)
• The Black Hole (1979)
• Double Negative (1980)
• North Sea Hijack, also known as Ffolkes (1980)
• For the Term of His Natural Life (1982)
• The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983)
• Psycho II (1983)
• The Glory Boys (1984)
• Crimes of Passion (1984)
• Psycho III (1986)
• Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987)
• Destroyer (1988)
• Edge of Sanity (1989)
• Chillers (1990)
• Daughter of Darkness (1990)
• I'm Dangerous Tonight (1990)
• Ghost Writer (1990)
• Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990)
• The Man Next Door (1991)
• The Naked Target (1992)
• In the Deep Woods (1992)

External links

• Anthony Perkins at the Internet Movie Database
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• Psycho star Anthony Perkins on playing Norman Bates

This article is based on a GNU FDL LGBT Wikia article: Perkins Anthony Perkins

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