Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor, director, and singer. He is most notable for the role of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller Psycho, which made him an influential figure in pop culture and the realm of horror films.
For other people named Anthony Perkins, see Anthony Perkins (disambiguation).
Anthony Perkins
April 4, 1932
September 12, 1992 (aged 60)
- Actor
- director
- singer
1953–1992
Tab Hunter (1955–1959)
Grover Dale (1964–1971)
- Osgood Perkins (father)
Born in New York City, Perkins got his start as an adolescent in summer stock programs, although he acted in films before his time on Broadway. His first film, The Actress, co-starring Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons and directed by George Cukor, was a disappointment aside from winning an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, prompting Perkins to return to theatre. He made his Broadway debut in the Elia Kazan-directed Tea and Sympathy (1953), in which he played Tom Lee, a "sissy" cured by the right woman. He was praised for the role and after it closed, he turned to Hollywood once more, starring in Friendly Persuasion (1956) with Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best New Actor of the Year and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film led to Perkins' seven-year, semi-exclusive contract with Paramount Pictures, where he was their last matinee idol.
In 1957, Perkins went on to appear in Fear Strikes Out. Paramount was keen to heterosexualize Perkins' image, leading to a string of romantic roles alongside Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine. He was able to land an occasional serious role, such as in the Broadway production Look Homeward, Angel, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award, and the 1959 film On the Beach with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner. Although he was cast once again as a romantic lead in Jane Fonda's film debut, Tall Story, he was shortly thereafter cast as Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), which established him as a horror icon and earned him a Bambi Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as a nomination and win for the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers Award for Best Actor. Because his work with Hitchcock led to his being typecast, Perkins bought himself out of his contact with Paramount and moved to France, where he made his European film debut with Goodbye Again (1961). The film earned him a Best Actor Bravo Otto nomination and his second career Bambi Award nomination. He won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a David di Donatello Award for Best Actor for the role.
After appearing in European films featuring Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, Melina Mercouri, and Brigitte Bardot, Perkins returned to the U.S. in 1968, with a role in Pretty Poison, co-starring Tuesday Weld, his first American film in eight years. In the film's wake, he starred in commercially and critically successful films including Catch-22 (1970), Play It as It Lays (1972), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Mahogany (1975).
Around the same time, Perkins decided to undergo conversion therapy, a pseudoscientific method of "changing" sexual orientation. He married Berry Berenson in 1973. He reprised his role as Norman Bates in Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986) and Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). The third installment in the anthology earned him a Best Actor Saturn Award nomination. His last film was In the Deep Woods, a television film broadcast a month after his death in September 1992 from AIDS-related causes.
Artistry[edit]
Influences[edit]
Perkins, having grown up in New York as the son of a theater performer, was heavily influenced by stage actors in the early years of his interest in acting. Slowly, however, his influences shifted, especially with the new wave of Method actors on the big screen. In 1958, Perkins admitted to Holiday magazine that the single performance that he believed had impacted his acting the most wasn't off the boards: "The single performance which influenced my own acting the most was [Marlon] Brando's in On the Waterfront ... That's the direction I want to go as an actor. To convey the maximum with the simplest, barest means."[173] He also mentioned James Dean later on: "Well, I was certainly impressed with the originality of [Dean's] talent. Of course, it was popular at the time of his emergence."[174]
Perkins was a lifelong member of the Actors Studio, an institution both Brando and Dean attended as well, which could have contributed to his interest in the Method. Perkins's posthumous biographer, Charles Winecoff, though, dismisses any ideas that Perkins was a Method actor: "Young Perkins fell somewhere in between the mannered style of his father's era and the new, seemingly organic style exemplified by Brando and Dean."[173]
Especially in his early years, Perkins took advice from a host of his costars, a majority of whom were experienced and revered actors in their own right. The most influential of his fellow stars were Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda.
Acting style[edit]
Despite his many celebrated performances, Perkins never discussed the method with which he acted. Many said he was somewhere between his father's style of acting (building a character from the outside in) and the Method technique (building a character from the inside out).[173] Recalling how he prepared for his mental breakdown scene in Fear Strikes Out, Norma Moore said he was especially "serious, very intent, very nervous before shooting ...–pacing, not talking to anybody, shaking his hands." The film's director, Robert Mulligan, said that Perkins was "riding on instinct, very giving and very trusting and very brave."[47] A year later, when Perkins played Eugene Gant for Broadway in Look Homeward, Angel, not much had changed. "His approach was a purely pragmatic one," friend George Roy Hill remembered. "He'd find a way to play it, and he had no theories to get in his way. I don't know what devices he used internally, but he was always very concerned with acting as acting."[173]
There is evidence to suggest that Perkins used previous (sometimes traumatic) experiences to drive his performance. During his debut run on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy, Perkins was allegedly drafted into the army, which he dodged by admitting he was a homosexual. This backfired, leading to harsh mistreatment at the hands of the Selective Service that reportedly scarred him so much he wouldn't speak about it. His boyfriend was there when he returned home, listening to him crying and whimpering. He later said that Perkins incorporated the same whimpering into his performance as Tom Lee in Sympathy.[175] Perkins, though, never hinted at this in a rare mention of his technique when speaking about the scene in Friendly Persuasion when Josh Birdwell decides to enlist:
Either way, it worked. Many of Perkins's films distinguished him as a powerful actor of the day, garnering numerous awards and nominations. As Turner Classic Movies summarized: "A masterful character actor, Perkins' ability to convey mental instability in a fashion that was simultaneously disturbing, affecting, and darkly humorous made him a unique and valuable talent."[166]
Personal life[edit]
Marriage[edit]
There are many conflicting accounts of how Perkins met his future wife, photographer Berinthia "Berry" Berenson, the younger sister of actress and model Marisa Berenson. There were stories that it was at a party in Manhattan in 1972,[5] while some insist it was on the set of Play It as It Lays.[197][198]
Death[edit]
During the filming of Psycho IV: The Beginning, Perkins was undergoing treatment for facial palsy. He was tested for HIV after an article in National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, said he was HIV-positive. Berenson said her husband had not been tested for HIV but had been given a series of blood tests in Los Angeles for the palsy on the side of his face. Ms. Berenson said she assumed that someone had tested her husband's blood for the virus and leaked the results to the tabloid.[253]
Perkins hid the fact that he had AIDS from the public for two years, going in and out of hospitals under assumed names. During this time, his wife and children were regularly tested; they all always came back negative. It was not until a few weeks before his death that he went public with the disease, although he had been working on movies during the time of his illness. He died at his Los Angeles home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related[254][165][255] pneumonia aged 60.[256] In a statement prepared before his death, Perkins said, "I chose not to go public about [having AIDS] because, to misquote Casablanca, 'I'm not much good at being noble,' but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of one old actor don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. 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."[255]
His urn, inscribed "Don't Fence Me In", is in an altar on the terrace of his former home in the Hollywood Hills.[257]