Trivia of Anthony Perkins

Trivia of Anthony Perkins (4 April 1932 - 12 September 1992)

*Born in New York in 1932, Anthony Perkins birth year was the same year his famous father, Osgood Perkins, starred in Scarface (1932).Work caused Osgood Perkins to be away from his family frequently. Young Anthony, frustrated by the absences and jealous of his father when he returned home, wished that his father would die. Osgood Perkins died suddenly in 1937 of a heart attack when his won was only five years old. Anthony Perkins told interviewers he assumed as a child that his wishes had actually killed his father.

*Anthony Perkins joined the union Actors Equity at age 15 and began appearing in stage productions. His film debut was 1953's "The Actress" with Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons.He was also directed by George Cukor, who was a friend and collaborator of his late father.The film was a commercial disappointment, although it scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.

*Perkins first gained widespread critical acclaim in 1954 when he replaced John Kerr in the lead role of the Broadway hit "Tea and Sympathy." Two years later he appeared in his second movie "Friendly Persuasion." It earned him a Golden Globe Award for New Actor of the Year and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

*In 1957 and 1958, Anthony Perkins branched out into pop music. He recorded three albums and his single "Moon-Light Swim" reached #24 on the U.S. pop charts.Perkins also spoke French fluently and recorded an entire French album.But with competition looming at every corner, he felt incredibly insecure about the quality of his voice, “My voice is terrible.”With greats like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as giant competitors, Perkins’s understated, yet undeniably sweet vocals fell beneath the radar. Later in his life, he called his discography “a second-rate art”.

*Alfred Hitchcock signed Anthony Perkins to portray the murderer Norman Bates in his 1960 film "Psycho" because Perkins had a boyish quality that reminded Hitchcock of James Stewart's younger years. The acclaimed performance was a key element in the film's success and identification as one of the best horror films of all time. The movie was a box office success earning back fifty times its production budget. "Psycho" was nominated for four Academy Awards. Anthony Perkins appeared in three "Psycho" sequels. 1983's "Psycho II" and 1986's "Psycho III" were released to theaters. 1990's "Psycho IV: The Beginning" was made for broadcast on cable TV.

*He married one of his fans, Berry Berenson in age 41.When Berenson was only 12 years old, she fell in love with Perkins’s onscreen persona in Phaedra. As luck would have it, she met her celebrity crush face-to-face ten years later. They connected at a Manhattan party and delightfully hit it off.He admitted that life with Berenson was “not so grasping and ambitious. Not so paranoid. Not so fearful.” And although 16 years her senior, and with the media predicting a divorce down the road, they found a balance that lasted them until the end of his life.

Berry Berenson tragically died on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001. She was aboard the hijacked plane steered into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.Both Perkins and Berenson are survived by their sons.

*During 1990, he got a blood sample taken due to a palsy on the side of his face. The National Enquirer illegally had Tony's blood sample tested for the AIDS virus, and found out that it was positive. Later that year, the National Enquirer wrote a story about his battle with AIDS, but the ironic thing was that he only found out that he was HIV positive from the article. He suspected that he probably was, but he never checked for it before the article was written.Perkins hid the fact that he had AIDS from the public for two years, going in and out of hospitals under assumed names.He died at his Los Angeles home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia aged 60.His urn, inscribed "Don't Fence Me In", is in an altar on the terrace of his former home in the Hollywood Hills.