Perkins, Anthony

Perkins, Anthony (1932-1992), American film actor at his best in sensitive, neurotic, or sinister roles. He was born in New York, son of the distinguished stage actor Osgood Perkins. His father died when he was five. Fascinated by the theatre from early childhood, Perkins began working backstage at 13, made his stage debut at 15, and landed his first film role, in The Actress (1953, directed by George Cukor), while still studying at Columbia University.

After making his Broadway debut in the Elia Kazan production of Tea and Sympathy (1954), Perkins was cast in a rapid succession of films, notably Friendly Persuasion (1956, William Wyler), as the son of a Quaker family during the American Civil War; Fear Strikes Out (1957, Robert Mulligan), as a father-fixated baseball player; and The Tin Star (1957, Anthony Mann), as a nervous sheriff tutored by a wise old gunslinger, played by Henry Fonda. Perkins was now considered one of the most promising new actors in Hollywood, but his distinctive physique—tall, wiry, and gangling—and his awkward, edgy persona made him difficult to cast. Then Alfred Hitchcock decided to cast him in Psycho (1960). The part of Norman Bates, the agonized young psychotic killer possessed by the personality of the mother he murdered, fitted Perkins perfectly. Too perfectly: no matter what roles Perkins played thereafter, or how well he played them, he remained firmly associated in the public imagination with the role of Bates.

For most of the 1960s Perkins took refuge in Europe to escape typecasting, playing Joseph K in the labyrinthine Orson Welles version of the famous novel by Franz Kafka, The Trial (1962). Back in Hollywood, Perkins found good roles in some offbeat films: a would-be arsonist outdone in craziness by Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison (1968), and the hapless ex-husband of vindictive Geraldine Chaplin in Remember My Name (1978). He also developed a fine gallery of oddball clergymen and, reluctantly embracing the ghost of Norman, starred in three Psycho sequels (1983, 1986 and, for television, 1990). He directed the second of these himself, as well as a further film, Lucky Stiff (1988), but they were poorly received.

From time to time Perkins returned to the theatre or appeared in television plays. His last years were overshadowed by AIDS. Right up to his death, Perkins rarely lacked work, but his career was permanently shadowed by the role in which he was most impeccably cast.