Anthony Perkins

Anthony Perkins was born in New York on April 4, 1932, the son of actor Osgood Perkins, who died when Tony was 5. Entertaining acting ambitions from an early age, Tony worked in summer stock as a teenager before breaking into the movies when he was in his early 20s.

Perkins began his film career playing sensitive youths, including Gary Cooper's pacifist son in Friendly Persuasion (1956), for which he received an Oscar nomination. After taking on the role of creepy Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), however, Perkins became typecast as a deranged outsider. Some of his notable performances include the mentally disturbed baseball player Jimmy Piersall in Fear Strikes Out (1957), a doomed survivor in On the Beach (1959), Josef K. in Orson Welles's production of The Trial (1962) and a chaplain in Catch-22 (1970).

Perkins starred in three Psycho sequels before his death on Sept. 12, 1992.

Filmography