Anthony Perkins

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Anthony Perkins (1975)

Anthony Perkins (born April 4, 1932 in New York City , † September 12, 1992 in Hollywood ) was an American actor and director . In Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho , he wrote film history in the role of the morbidly mother-fixated motel owner Norman Bates, part of which he continued in the 1980s as a director alongside the lead role himself.

life and work

Anthony Perkins was the only child of the American stage and film actor Osgood Perkins (1891-1937) and his wife Janet Esseltyn Rane (1895-1979). His father was a popular film and stage actor of his time and played in Howard Hawks ' Scarface (1932) , among others .

Anthony Perkins made his film debut in 1953 in Theater Fever , a drama directed by George Cukor, starring alongside Spencer Tracy , Jean Simmons and Teresa Wright . In his second film, Alluring Temptation , he played the Quaker son of Gary Cooper and received a nomination for an Oscar and the Golden Globe Award for Best Young Actor in 1956 . He had his first leading role in 1957 in the film Fear Strikes Out , in which he played the baseball player Jimmy Piersall . In 1959 Perkins played a bigger role in the end-of-time drama The Last Shore , which received numerous nominations and awards for major film awards. For his role in Do you love Brahms? based on the novel of the same name by Françoise Sagan , he won the Acting Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961 .

Anthony Perkins belonged to a new generation of Hollywood actors who wanted to stand out from the stereotypical image of men in early Hollywood, which was largely shaped by actors like John Wayne . In contrast to the apparently invulnerable, "tough" men, young, doubting, emotionally stressed, often psychologically unstable anti-heroes now moved into the center of the films, other representatives included John Garfield , James Dean , Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando .

After further successful appearances in film and on Broadway , Perkins followed in 1960, the most famous role to this day as the identity-disturbed murderer in Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock . The character of Norman Bates was later voted second by the American Film Institute in the election of the 50 greatest villains in American film and also achieved cult status beyond the film. Since Perkins wanted to avoid being tied to similar roles by the success of the film , he turned to more varied role offers in Europe. In the following years he worked there in several successful productions, such as Joseph K. in Orson Welles ' film The Trial . His subsequent films included Phaedra , The Third Dimension, and The Tenth Day . He co-wrote the film script for the crime film Sheila in 1973. In 1974 he played in the star-studded film adaptation of the famous crime novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie .

Anthony Perkins (1983)

In Hollywood, despite these successes, he was still associated with the character of Norman Bates. On his return to the United States, he played the role of Norman Bates in three other sequels to Psycho , which did not achieve the same level of critical and public respect as Hitchcock's film, but were nevertheless respected successes. Perkins also worked as a director for Psycho III in 1986. He made his second and last film as a director two years later with the horror comedy The Fat and the Beautiful ... to Eat . In the course of his career, Perkins played other notable characters in addition to Bates, including the chaplain in Catch-22 - The Evil Trick , which was based on the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller . In 1980 he made the movie Killer Out of the Dark with Lee Broker and Kenneth Welsh . However, much of his later work was produced for television, mostly mini-series or television films.

Perkins' regular German speaker was Eckart Dux from 1957 until his death ; As a temporary measure, Reinhard Glemnitz spoke six times between 1961 and 1978 (including in The Trial ) .

Private life

Anthony Perkins was bisexual and had several affairs with men, including ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev and actor Tab Hunter . Perkins himself stated that until he met actress Victoria Principal while filming That Was Roy Bean (1972), he only had gay love affairs. In 1973, at the age of 41, he married the photographer Berinthia “Berry” Berenson (1948–2001), who was 16 years his junior . In 1974 his son Osgood "Oz" Perkins was born, who also became an actor. His second son Elvis Perkins (* 1976) works as a musician.

In 1992, Perkins prepared for the fifth part of the Psycho film series, which could no longer be realized. Anthony Perkins died on September 12, 1992 at the age of 60 of AIDS- related pneumonia. He had kept AIDS from the public and even from his friends and children since he was diagnosed in 1986. Only his wife was privy to it. She died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks aboard American Airlines Flight 11 - the first of two aircraft to fly into the World Trade Center .

In art

  • Perkins' life was recorded in Charles Winecoff's biography Split Image , published in 2006.
  • In the feature film Hitchcock (2012) the shooting of Psycho is the theme. Perkins is portrayed by actor James D'Arcy .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

  • 1957 Golden Globe for Best Young Actor for Alluring Temptation
  • 1957 Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Alluring Temptation
  • 1960 International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers, Best Actor for Psycho
  • 1962 and 1963 bronze Bravo Otto of the German youth magazine BRAVO

literature

  • Marc Hairapetian: Poet of the Morbid. Playing as therapy: Anthony Perkins died ten years ago . In: film service . 55th year No. 19/2002, ISSN  0720-0781 , pp. 42-43.

Web links

Commons : Anthony Perkins  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anthony Perkins in the German dubbing index
personal data
SURNAME Perkins, Anthony
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1992
Place of death Hollywood