159 Facts About Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins's first film, The Actress, co-starring Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons and directed by George Cukor, was an overall disappointment, prompting Perkins to return to theatre.

Anthony Perkins made his Broadway debut in the Elia Kazan-directed Tea and Sympathy, in which he played Tom Lee, a "sissy" who is "cured" by the right woman.

Anthony Perkins was praised for the role, and after it closed, he turned to Hollywood once more, starring in Friendly Persuasion 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.

In 1957, Anthony Perkins went on to appear in Fear Strikes Out.

Paramount was keen to heterosexualize Anthony Perkins's image, leading to a string of romantic roles alongside Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine.

Anthony Perkins 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.

Anthony Perkins won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a David di Donatello Award for Best Actor for the role.

Anthony Perkins reprised his role as Norman Bates in Psycho II, Psycho III, and Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Anthony Perkins was born April 4,1932, in Manhattan, the son of actor Osgood Perkins and his wife, Janet Esselstyn.

The Anthony Perkins family hired a French nanny, Jeanne, to look after their son, leading to Anthony Perkins' fluency in French, which proved useful years later.

Between his father's absences, Anthony Perkins was surrounded by women, the most influential of which was his mother.

Anthony Perkins became a mythic being to me, to be dreaded and appeased.

In 1942, when Anthony Perkins was ten, the family moved to Boston.

Anthony Perkins managed much of the canteen's activities, and the job gave the pair money to live on.

On days when she was busy, Anthony Perkins was sent to stay with his grandmother.

Anthony Perkins soon made a deal with his mother that if he got good grades, she would allow him to return to Boston the next year for schooling.

That year, Anthony Perkins ranked in the top third of his class.

Smaller class sizes caused Anthony Perkins to stand out, earning him a reputation as the class magician and pianist.

Anthony Perkins was renowned for his lisping Roddy McDowall impression, which he often performed in the halls between classes.

In 1948, Anthony Perkins returned to summer stock with a different company.

Anthony Perkins's mother had found a job as a manager for the Robin Hood Theatre in Arden, Delaware, where Perkins ran the box office and earned stage experience.

Anthony Perkins did not experience similar camaraderie at Rollins College that fall.

Rollins College was nestled in the heart of Florida, and Anthony Perkins had arrived just after Congress had named homosexuals and Communists as being enemies of equal danger.

Anthony Perkins appeared in numerous stage productions at the school and moved around fraternities constantly, something that got on the nerves of his mother.

Anthony Perkins was directed by George Cukor, who was a friend and collaborator of his late father.

Anthony Perkins was first noticed when he replaced John Kerr on Broadway in the lead of Tea and Sympathy in 1954, where he was directed by the legendary Elia Kazan, who had been a friend of his father's.

Anthony Perkins was after shipped out to Hollywood, where he began shooting alongside Dorothy McGuire and Gary Cooper, his screen mother and father.

Anthony Perkins's inexperience radiated almost childish naivete, something that endeared him to Gary Cooper.

Anthony Perkins was regularly praised by Wyler for his performance and Cooper began publicly endorsing Anthony Perkins's abilities.

Anthony Perkins saw what an emotional toll it took on them.

Anthony Perkins's first film for the studio was a 1957 biopic about Boston Red Sox baseball player Jimmy Piersall titled Fear Strikes Out.

Anthony Perkins played Riley Wade, whose father, Jacob, abruptly returns to his life after having abandoned his mother years before.

Kim Stanley, a previous costar of Anthony Perkins's, was cast as his love interest but was replaced at the last minute by Elaine Aiken in her film debut.

Anthony Perkins's next film was a Western, this time named The Tin Star with Henry Fonda.

Originally, despite his burgeoning popularity, Anthony Perkins was not wanted for the project: "The producers, Bill Perlberg and George Seaton, told someone who told someone who told someone who told me that they wouldn't have me in their picture for a million dollars," Anthony Perkins admitted during filming.

Anthony Perkins released three pop music albums and several singles in 1957 and 1958 on Epic and RCA Victor under the name Tony Anthony Perkins.

Anthony Perkins's single "Moon-Light Swim" was a moderate hit in the United States, peaking at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1957.

Anthony Perkins, who had a dressing room far from the stage, often had to race between scenes to retrieve something so as not to miss his cue, something his costars used in practical jokes.

Many times, they turned the backstage area into an obstacle course, seeing if Anthony Perkins could get back to the curtain in time.

Anthony Perkins was teamed up again with Van Fleet in This Angry Age, known as The Sea Wall, for Columbia, replacing James Dean.

Anthony Perkins starred in Desire Under the Elms for Paramount with Sophia Loren and was her first American screen kiss.

Anthony Perkins helped me with my English, and I tried to make him laugh.

Between the filming of Desire and his next movie, Anthony Perkins received an offer to appear in what became the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe.

Anthony Perkins was given the role of Shell Oil Junior and Frank Sinatra was considered for the role of his companion who both dress up in drag to board an all-women train car.

Anthony Perkins, who was still stinging after losing the role in Some Like It Hot, was cast soon after.

Anthony Perkins did receive a reprieve to sing "Green Mansions," the title song of the film, which briefly entered the charts before almost immediately falling off.

Anthony Perkins played a doomed father living in Australia after a nuclear war wipes humanity off all other continents.

Anthony Perkins supported legendary actors such as Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire in his first dramatic role.

Unlike other films, Anthony Perkins got on well with his fellow cast members and even helped Astaire prepare for his serious scenes.

Anthony Perkins wanted only to be a serious actor, not a teen idol.

Anthony Perkins constantly pressured Perkins into breaking up with Hunter and going into conversion therapy for the five years that Perkins was under contract with the studio.

Hitchcock later said that he'd had Anthony Perkins cast since seeing him in Friendly Persuasion.

Anthony Perkins was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Again, Anthony Perkins found himself subjected to the romantic attention of his female costar, although he customarily declined.

Anthony Perkins returned briefly to America to appear in a short-lived Broadway play, Harold, but he returned to Europe shortly thereafter.

Anthony Perkins was then cast in Phaedra, shot in Greece with Melina Mercouri and directed by Jules Dassin, undoubtedly inspired by Mercouri's recent success in Never on Sunday.

Raf Vallone [who played Anthony Perkins's father and Mercouri's husband in the film] is a good-looking man, but Anthony Perkins.

The production process was captured on video for the documentary The World of Sophia Loren, where she and Anthony Perkins can be seen laughing between takes, practicing scenes, solving puzzles, and singing the popular "After I'm Gone".

Anthony Perkins continued with his mentally disturbed performances in Orson Welles' version of The Trial, based on the Kafka novel about Joseph K, a man who's arrested and attempts to figure out what his crime is and how to defend himself.

Anthony Perkins did not mind the typecasting as long as he was able to work with Welles, who personally wanted him to play the lead.

Besides Anthony Perkins's abandoned plan to write a book about Welles, there was genuine affection between the two.

Anthony Perkins's next film was Une ravissante idiote with Brigitte Bardot, which was a comedy.

Anthony Perkins was incredibly uncomfortable around Bardot, which was drastically different from his behavior around his previous costars.

Anthony Perkins returned to America to star in the musical alongside Charmian Carr, who was fresh off her success in The Sound of Music.

Anthony Perkins withdrew from the role, but he remained something like a muse for Sondheim for quite a few years.

Shortly thereafter, Anthony Perkins returned to his beloved Europe and he starred in another French film, The Champagne Murders, for Claude Chabrol.

In 1968 Anthony Perkins made his first Hollywood movie since Psycho, Pretty Poison with Tuesday Weld, in which he was typecast - for a fifth time - in the role of a psychotic young man.

Anthony Perkins tells her he is a secret agent, after which they go on "missions" together, culminating in an attack on a factory.

Anthony Perkins returned to motion pictures soon after, assisting Charles Bronson in the French crime drama Someone Behind the Door, playing yet another mentally disturbed man.

Anthony Perkins was reunited with another one of his older costars when he supported Tuesday Weld in Play It as It Lays, based on the Joan Didion novel.

However, Anthony Perkins publicly labelled the film as being his best performance.

Anthony Perkins changed genres for his next film, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

Anthony Perkins was ending a long relationship with dancer Grover Dale and had started therapy with Mildred Newman.

In 1973, Anthony Perkins reunited with close friend Stephen Sondheim to co-writeThe Last of Sheila, a 1973 American mystery film directed by Herbert Ross.

The characters were influenced by people Anthony Perkins and Sondheim knew in real life: The film was a commercial success, and led to Anthony Perkins and Sondheim sharing the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, which led them to try to collaborate again two more times.

Anthony Perkins later said other inspirations were They Got Me Covered, The Ipcress File and Cloak and Dagger.

Anthony Perkins was one of the many stars featured in Murder on the Orient Express, adapted from a popular Agatha Christie novel.

Anthony Perkins played the suspicious McQueen, and was reunited with previous costars Ingrid Bergman and Martin Balsam, as well as being teamed up with legendary actors such as Lauren Bacall.

Also in 1974, Anthony Perkins co-starred with Beau Bridges and Blythe Danner in Lovin' Molly, a drama film directed by Sidney Lumet.

Anthony Perkins enjoyed success on Broadway in Peter Shaffer's 1974 play Equus.

Anthony Perkins's role was received to rave reviews, perhaps some of the best of his Broadway career.

Anthony Perkins continued with his stage work and directed the Off-Broadway production The Wager, which had an insignificant impact.

Anthony Perkins returned to film supporting Diana Ross in Mahogany, where he played a photographer bent on making a young model into a star.

Anthony Perkins played a singing psychiatrist and a victim in numerous pretend horror films.

Towards the end of the program, Anthony Perkins posed and chatted with The Muppets.

Two years after his SNL appearance, Anthony Perkins co-starred with Geraldine Chaplin in Remember My Name.

Anthony Perkins plays the husband of his real-life wife, Berry Berenson.

Anthony Perkins's character is besieged by his ex-spouse who has just been released from prison and is bent on getting him back.

Anthony Perkins projected a more kid-friendly light when he was featured in Walt Disney's mammoth science fiction epic The Black Hole in 1979, where he reunited with crew members from Fear Strikes Out, whom he hadn't seen in twenty-two years.

Shortly thereafter, Anthony Perkins returned to the boards in 1979 in another Broadway success with the play Romantic Comedy by Bernard Slade, the author of Same Time, Next Year.

Anthony Perkins played playwright Jason Carmichael who meets Phoebe Craddock and falls in love with her, and they decide to work together on a production.

Anthony Perkins played a slick, unrelentingly-psychotic villain in the 1980 action film North Sea Hijack co-starring Roger Moore.

Anthony Perkins was one of the many names appearing in the all-star cast of Winter Kills, a dark comedy about geo-politics and presidential assassinations.

Anthony Perkins reprised the role of Norman Bates in Psychos three sequels.

Anthony Perkins then starred in and directed Psycho III, in which Norman Bates falls in love with a tragic wayward nun who comes to the Bates Motel.

Anthony Perkins drastically changed genres for his next project, the slasher film Destroyer, where he again had a supporting role.

Anthony Perkins was praised for his role, but the overall film was deemed a disappointment.

Anthony Perkins disappeared briefly from the screen, directing but not appearing in the comedy Lucky Stiff, which was a humorous take on cannibalism and incest.

Anthony Perkins found a reprieve while filming the pilot for the light-hearted show The Ghost Writer about a horror novelist named Anthony Strack who is haunted by his deceased wife after he remarries.

The pilot ended with Anthony Perkins finishing the manuscript of his next novel, which was based on a supernatural encounter he had with the ghost of his wife.

Anthony Perkins gave in to typecasting and played Norman Bates again in the made-for-cable film Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Anthony Perkins appeared in six television productions from 1990 to 1992 while privately battling with AIDS, including Daughter of Darkness and hosting a 12-episode horror anthology series titled Chillers.

Anthony Perkins made his final appearance in In the Deep Woods with Rosanna Arquette, which was released posthumously.

Anthony 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.

Anthony 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.

Especially in his early years, Anthony Perkins took advice from a host of his costars, a majority of whom were experienced and revered actors in their own right.

Anthony Perkins's boyfriend was there when he returned home, listening to him crying and whimpering.

Anthony Perkins later said that Perkins incorporated the same whimpering into his performance as Tom Lee in Sympathy.

Many of Anthony Perkins's films distinguished him as a powerful actor of the day, garnering numerous awards and nominations.

Anthony Perkins's approach was that he was suffering, that stuff was going on inside of him, and I don't think it was.

Anthony Perkins was often described as "boyish" by fan magazines, and his odd habits, from the way he dressed to the meals he ate, were written about in detail.

Anthony Perkins seemingly played into this quirky yet insecure persona, venting to McCall's:.

Anthony Perkins was often claimed to be "infatuated" with many of his leading women, whether they were married or not.

Soon, Anthony Perkins's dating life became as prominent as his career, something Anthony Perkins was deeply irritated and annoyed by.

Anthony Perkins told me [that he was gay], and it just didn't register.

Anthony Perkins died at the age of 53, one day before the ninth anniversary of Perkins's death.

Anthony Perkins reportedly had his first experience with a woman at age 39 with actress Victoria Principal on location filming The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in 1971.

Many friends, partners, and colleagues have consistently said Anthony Perkins was homosexual rather than bisexual.

In 1971, Anthony Perkins ended a seven-year relationship with dancer Grover Dale for unknown reasons, after which he turned to friends Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin for help.

Anthony Perkins later became one of Newman's most vocal celebrity supporters.

Anthony Perkins has been described as one of the two great men in the life of French songwriter Patrick Loiseau.

Anthony Perkins was at Paramount and I was with Warner Brothers.

Many people reported arguments between the studio heads and Anthony Perkins, many revolving around Hunter and their relationship.

Anthony Perkins wanted to be a movie star more than anything.

Sophia Loren remembered Anthony Perkins's dressing room for 1958's Desire Under the Elms as looking like a monk's cell, and she was often photographed smiling and laughing with him when they reunited in Europe a few years afterward.

Anthony Perkins was a favorite of Orson Welles, whom he collaborated with four times.

Anthony Perkins turned all of these down, mostly due to scheduling conflicts.

Anthony Perkins was largely remembered by friends and associates as being a shy, neurotic young man, with the ability to be very alluring.

Anthony Perkins always seemed to have four ideas going on in his head at once.

Anthony Perkins was just a nice guy, and not what I had expected at all.

Anthony Perkins was a bit of a game player with people's minds.

Anthony Perkins was a wonderful guy, and he had a very funny, very dry sense of humor.

However uninterested in interaction Anthony Perkins was, his interests were not solely solitary.

Anthony Perkins was a fan of the board game Scrabble, and when entertaining his first alleged boyfriend, he often engaged him in a round.

Anthony Perkins was a fan of The Ed Sullivan Show, which he eventually appeared on during his heyday.

Anthony Perkins's wit was not the only thing employed during activities.

Tab Hunter remembered Anthony Perkins purchasing a deluxe portable ping-pong table for him one Christmas.

Anthony Perkins's amusement came from using his quirky, brainy charm and extremely dry humor.

Anthony Perkins was a Democrat who supported many progressive causes, such as civil rights and feminism.

Anthony Perkins participated in the 1965 Selma march for the right for African Americans to vote, and there are numerous photos and videos documenting his participation, most notably where he stands to the left of Martin Luther King Jr.

Anthony Perkins continued on to Montgomery, the Alabama state capital, the next day.

Anthony Perkins rarely discussed religion outside of his character's faiths.

Anthony Perkins was tested for HIV after an article in National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, said he was HIV-positive.

Anthony Perkins hid the fact that he had AIDS from the public for two years, going in and out of hospitals under assumed names.

Anthony Perkins died at his Los Angeles home on September 12,1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia aged 60.

Anthony Perkins's urn, inscribed "Don't Fence Me In", is in an altar on the terrace of his former home in the Hollywood Hills.

Anthony Perkins is considered a cultural icon and an influential figure in film because of his long career, most notably his defining role as Norman Bates in Psycho.

Anthony Perkins has been considered an icon of the New York actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, often being compared to legendary performers Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and even James Dean, whom he was once set to replace.

Anthony Perkins became a poster child for neurotic and shy men, many of whom felt outcast in average American society.

Either way, Anthony Perkins was always praised for his heartfelt and dedicated performances, as Brando, Clift, and Dean had been.

Anthony Perkins thought he was one hell of an actor.

Anthony Perkins was outspoken about politically left causes, making him appealing to liberals.

Anthony Perkins was recognized by numerous minorities, including the ones he belonged to, as a tireless advocate for the causes he stood for, such as civil rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights and same-sex marriage.

Alongside Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins is considered one of the most significant actors to have died from the disease.

In New Zealand, Anthony Perkins was one of the many famous people honored in their national AIDS remembrance quilt in 1994.

The biography's publication led to Anthony Perkins being featured in numerous gay magazines, most notably The Advocate.

Anthony Perkins's character was featured briefly, with most of the screen time going to Scarlett Johansson, who played Janet Leigh.

Anthony Perkins's homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but it was heavily implied.

Anthony Perkins was a part of Philippe Halsman's famous "Jump" series, in which Halsman requested all famous sitters to leap for him under the impression that while people were trained in many other things, no one was ever taught how to jump.