Anthony Perkins: Split Image

"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."
Anthony Perkins
(04/04/1932 – 09/12/1992)
US actor
Anthony Perkins (born April 4th, 1932 in New York, died September 12th, 1992 in Hollywood) was a US actor best known for his role as the maniacal murderer, Norman Bates, in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
His first movie was The Actress (1953), then came Friendly Persuasion (1956), for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

After a few other much-acclaimed performances both in film and on Broadway, he starred in Psycho in 1960, which lead to him being typecast as the crazy killer, severely limiting the range of roles he was offered later in life.

He went on to star in (and even direct) the sequels and prequel to Psycho and also played a few memorable characters, such as the chaplain in Catch-22 (1970), but most of his later work were made-for-TV movies.

His private life was something of a mystery, while he had plenty of homosexual affairs, such as with Tab Hunter, Grover Helms, and Alan Dale, he was also married for 19 years to Berry Berenson.

It is a matter of speculation, whether Perkins was bisexual or gay, just using his marriage as a cover-up. His 1992 death of AIDS complications made many people think that the second explanation might be correct.

His son, Osgood Perkins, credited as Oz Perkins, is also an actor.

His widow, Berry Berenson, died on an airplane that crashed into the World Trade Center during the September 2001 Terrorist Attacks, the day before the nine-year anniversary of Perkins' death.
Paramount groomed him to replace the late James Dean and become Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob. But his landmark performance as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho killed that—and spawned an image of Anthony Perkins that eerily paralleled his conflicted, fractured off-screen life.

Anthony Perkins: Split Image insightfully and comprehensively documents the life of this great actor, who was forced to act the part of ladies’ man while privately struggling with his own homosexuality—and his search for acceptance.

by JOHN GILMORE
My personal manager, Howard Austin, who was then handling Tony Perkins along with me was Gore Vidal's live-in secretary. They stayed together in Vidal's Upper East Side place. I often saw Tony Perkins in Gore's apartment. Once he came with an attorney who was helping him out of a vice jam.

Tony was on a day bed, wringing his hands and crying. After he had left, Howard told me about Tony's exploits in the subways and movie theaters. He couldn't stay out of the back rows and public men's rooms, and was in hot water for groping a cop staked out to collar "sex offenders." He told me Tony was anxious with that term - that he believed he was not an "offender." How on earth could he be a sex offender, he said, when the other party was asking for it?