Oscar Actors: Perkins, Anthony–Background, Career, Awards

Anthony Perkins Career Summary:

Born in New York City, Perkins got his start in adolescent summer stock programs, although he debuted in films before he set foot on a professional stage.

His first film, The Actress, costarring Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons and directed by George Cukor, was a disappointment save for an Oscar nod for its costumes.

He made his Broadway debut in the Elia Kazan-directed Tea and Sympathy where he played Tom Lee, a “sissy” cured by the right woman. He was praised for the role, and after it closed, he turned to Hollywood once more, starring in Friendly Persuasion (1956) with Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, which earned him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

The film’s rushes led to Perkins getting a 7-year, semi-exclusive contract with Paramount, becoming their last matinee idol.

Although Friendly Persuasion earned him praise, Perkins solidified himself as a powerful actor in Fear Strikes Out the following year, which caused some to name him “the next James Dean” and “the greatest American actor under thirty.”

Paramount was concerned with heterosexualizing Perkins’s screen image, which led to a string of romantic roles alongside Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Shirley MacLaine.

He scored the lead role in the Broadway play Look Homeward, Angel (for which he was nominated for Tony), and the 1959 film On the Beach, with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner.

Although he was once again cast as a romantic lead in Jane Fonda’s film debut, Tall Story, he was cast as Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), which established him as horror icon and garnered him nominations for Bambi and  Saturn Awards.

Curse of Typecasting

In order to escape the same villainous roles, as well as the brutal homophobia he was being subjected to, Perkins bought himself out of his Paramount contract and went to France, where he debuted in Goodbye Again (1961). Even when paired with Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman, he still distinguished himself as talented performer, and the film won him the Cannes Film Fest Best Actor Award.

Born April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor, director, and singer. Perkins is regarded as an influential figure in pop culture for his work in horror films, where he often played villains, though he was also renowned for playing romantic leads.

He represented an era of vulnerable actors who straddled the line between masculinity and femininity, and he distinguished himself by playing unconfident characters.

After some European films with the likes of Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, Melina Mercouri, and Brigitte Bardot, Perkins returned to America in 1968 with his first American film after an eight-year hiatus, Pretty Poison. He costarred with Tuesday Weld, and the film became a cult classic.

In the film’s wake, he starred in commercially and critically successful films, such as Catch-22 (1970), Play It as It Lays (1972), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Mahogany (1975), the latter of which broke box-office attendance records.

During this time, Perkins went through conversion therapy and married Berry Berenson in 1973.

Psycho Sequels

He also conceded to typecasting, starring in Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and Psycho IV: The Beginning.

He was involved in numerous television excursions, and his last film, In the Deep Woods, was TV movie, broadcast one month after his death in September 1992, from AIDS.

His paternal great-grandfather was wood engraver Andrew Varick Stout Anthony. Perkins was descendant of Mayflower passengers John Howland, Myles Standish and William Brewster as well as Roger Conant. Through an entirely paternal line he was descended from John Perkins, who arrived in Boston from England in 1630 as part of the Puritan migration to New England.

Perkins did not see much of his father, who was busy in film and stage roles. His supporting role in the original picture adaptation of Scarface, which was released the year Perkins was born.

Perkins’s only fond memories of his father came primarily from a 1937 summer excursion to Fire Island, although they did little together on the trip. During this time, the Perkinses hired French nanny Jeanne to look after their son. This led to Perkins learning French just as well as English, which would be useful years later when he moved to France.

Between his father’s absences, Perkins was surrounded by a feminine presence, esp. his mother. “I became abnormally close to my mother,” Perkins recalled to People in 1983, “and whenever my father came home I was jealous. It was the Oedipal thing in a pronounced form, I loved him but I also wanted him to be dead so I could have her all to myself.”

On September 21, 1937, Osgood Perkins died of heart attack  after a successful opening night of his newest play, Susan and God. He is said to have told his wife after coming home, “I like that role. I hope the play never closes.” His death caused Perkins to feel intensely guilty. “I was horrified,” he said later. “I assumed that my wanting him to be dead had actually killed him. I prayed and prayed for my father to come back. I remember long nights of crying in bed. For years I nursed the hope that he wasn’t really dead. Because I’d see him on film, it was as if he were still alive. He became a mythic being to me, to be dreaded and appeased.”

With the last masculine presence gone, Perkins was surrounded wholly by women once again. He was raised alongside a repulsion of religion and constant feminine presence, which manifested in the sexually-ambiguous way he carried himself. Besides his mother, a consistent female companion in Perkins’s life was young, burgeoning playwright Michaela O’Harra, whom his mother had taken an acute liking to. “My mother said–I don’t know if she used the word lesbian … but that was just what it felt like to me: ‘Oh, they’re having a lesbian relationship.’ You know, something like that,” recalled Perkins’s childhood friend, John Kerr, about the relationship between O’Harra and Perkin’s mother. Although her sexuality has been disputed, Perkins’s mother was not heterosexual.

During this time, Perkins’s mother began to sexually abuse him. “She was constantly touching me and caressing me. Not realizing what effect she was having, she would touch me all over, even stroking the inside of my thighs right up to my crotch.” This behavior continued on into his adulthood.

In 1942, when Perkins was 10, the family moved to Boston. Due to connections in the theatre industry, Janet gained a position at the nearby American Theatre Wing’s Boston Stage Door Canteen. It had been successful in numerous other cities, including the country’s capital, and experienced similar growth in Boston. Janet, who managed much of the canteen’s activities, shared in this abrupt yet steady wealth, which gave them money to live off of. On days when she was busy, Perkins was sent to stay with his grandmother, whom he had affectionately taken to calling Mimi

The feeling of a parent’s absence was too much for Perkins, who began to rebel at his overcrowded public school–he was labelled a “gifted drifter.” To quell his rebellious habits, Janet shipped him off to Brooks School, 40 minutes outside of Boston.

The placement was disastrous: Perkins’s childhood habit of stuttering returned again and he shied away from all athletics. Janet, however, forced him into baseball. It was the first time in his life where Perkins was overwhelmed by solely masculine presence and therefore singled out for being “different.”

 The pressure bore down on him, leading him to leave school in long absences during his second year after he came down with back-to-back cases of scarlet fever. After missing many classes, Perkins sunk to the bottom of his class in grades. This led Perkins and Janet to make a deal: if he got good grades, she would allow him to return to Boston the next year for schooling. Perkins stayed true to his promise, ranking in the top third of his class and inspiring his headmaster to comment, “Tony Perkins is considerably more mature than the rest of his contemporaries, and is impatient with many of their schoolboy interests.”

During this time that Perkins’s absence of a father began to bear down on him again. “As Tony grew older and saw other boys with their fathers,” Janet remembered, “he badly missed his own father. And the only identification he could have with his father was through theater … I began to realize that he was acquiring an unusual interest in performing … A friend was running a summer stock company, and I approached him to ask whether Tony might play some small parts.”

 This launched Perkins’s adolescent summer stock career. The first summer stock company Perkins played for was at the Brattleboro Summer Theater in Vermont, where he played some minor parts in the plays Junior Miss, Kiss and Tell, and George Washington Slept Here, and manned the box office. This earned him both twenty-five dollars a week and an Equity card.

Janet sent Perkins to Browne & Nichols School. At the time, it was an all-boys school located in Cambridge, with a high percentage of football players and overly-masculine types. With smaller classes, Perkins stood out more, leading him to earn a reputation as the class magician and piano player. He was also renowned for his lisping Roddy McDowall impression, which he performed in the halls between classes, to his fellow students’ delight.

 Around this time the public was first introduced to the groundbreaking yet controversial Kinsey Reports exploring the layers of human sexuality.

In summer 1948, Perkins again returned to summer stock, this time under a different company. Janet had found a job as a manager for the Robin Hood Theatre in Arden, Delaware, where Perkins once again manned the box office and earned stage experience. His most memorable performance was in Sarah Simple where he played a near-sighted twin, though it was at the Robin Hood Theatre that Perkins first met Charles Williamson, who would later have an important impact in Perkins’s life.

In 1949, Perkins was in school activities. He joined the varsity tennis team and the glee club, and was made co-literary editor of the school paper, The Spectator. Occasionally, he contributed articles.

Perkins began to question his sexuality–he felt singled out as the “other.”

Many Browne & Nicholas alums were interested in Harvard, but  Perkins, whose grades were too low , was the only student persuaded to attend Rollins College when a representative toured the school.

He returned to Delaware that summer, where he once again worked at the Robin Hood, one of the most important summer stock programs in the country. There he grew reacquainted with old friend Charles Williamson, going out to lunch with him and swimming together during breaks. Perkins developed a crush on Williamson, who recalled, “He never expressed his homosexuality during the summer of 1950. He did not act on it at all. At the time, I was very much in the closet and repressed. We both shared that.”

Perkins played Fred Whitmarsh in the play Years Ago, who he’d perform again a few years later in Cukor’s screen adaptation.

Perkins did not experience camaraderie at Rollins College. Known as a Christian, all-American school, Rollins College was in the heart of Florida, and Perkins had arrived after Congress had named homosexuals and Communists enemies of equal danger.

Perkins appeared in stage productions at school and moved around fraternities constantly. It was at Rollins that Perkins first started experimenting with sex with other men.

Some homosexual students, Perkins’s friends, were expelled from Rollins and even arrested after a fellow student beat one of them. However, due to Perkins’s connections with the theater professor, he was spared. This led to tension between him and the rest of the students, who knew of Perkins’s sexuality. It motivated Perkins to transfer to Columbia University

Film and Broadway Debut

While attending Rollins College, Perkins went out to California over summer vacation, hoping to make it into the movies. Having heard that MGM was making a screen adaptation of Years Ago, he lingered on the lot, hoping a casting director would spot and test him. As Perkins later recalled: “I hung around the casting gate all summer, running errands and picking up sandwiches for the guards.

One day they were testing Margaret O’Brien and they needed the back of someone’s head. They didn’t know who to use. Then someone piped up and said, ‘How about that kid that’s always hanging around here? We could use the back of his head!’

Perkins was first noticed when he replaced John Kerr on Broadway in Tea and Sympathy in 1954 (age 22), directed by the legendary Kazan, who had been a friend of his father’s. In the play, he took on the role of Tom Lee, a college student who is labelled as a “sissy” and fixed with the love of the right woman, in an almost autobiographical role.

Perkins said later, “It was the best part ever written for a young guy. I felt so involved with that particular play. In many ways, I was Tom Lee.” Although homophobically written and resolved, the play was the only explicit work to hit Broadway depicting homosexuality and garnered a large gay following, therefore establishing Perkins in the gay-dominated theater world.

Through this audience the production became a success, and many people thought Perkins was substantially better than his predecessor, John Kerr, who went on to play the role in the film adaptation. Joan Fickett, who played Perkins’s love interest in the play, commented, “He was that boy. I’d seen John Kerr do it before, but Tony had a quality that was fantastic for the part–all the rawness and the hurt and the confusion, he just had. I found his performance tremendously poignant.”  The play’s success and Perkins’s tremendous performance renewed Hollywood interest in him.

During Tea and Sympathy, Perkins was drafted despite (or perhaps because of) the recent end of the Korean War. Without consulting anybody, he decided to tell the Selective Service he was a “practicing homosexual,” an eligible way to be deemed unfit for service, rather than enter the military. This had disastrous results, leaving Perkins traumatized.

Perkins was soon after shipped out to Hollywood, where he began shooting alongside Dorothy McGuire and Cooper, his screen mother and father.

Perkins, native New Yorker, did not know how to drive yet and regularly hitchhiked out from his hotel at Chateau Marmont to the set each day, something which became infamous and often talked about in fan magazines. His boyfriend, Tab Hunter, taught him how to drive.

 Perkins’s inexperience radiated childish naïveté, something which endeared him to Gary Cooper. “Coop was warm and gracious and kindly,” a man who worked on the film, said. “He liked [Perkins and I] a lot, and Tony loved to hear him talk.  The feeling was mutual between Perkins, Cooper, and even the director. Perkins was regularly praised by Wyler for his performance and Cooper began publicly endorsing Perkins’s abilities.

This led to Perkins and Cooper sharing the cover of the July 1956 issue of Life magazine. Cooper spoke about Perkins in a fatherly manner: “I think he’d do well to spend a summer on a ranch,” he commented about his younger costar. “It would toughen him up and he’d learn a lot from another kind of people.” Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, asserted that, although her father certainly admired Perkins, it could have been for other reasons: “He had friends in Hollywood in the acting community who were gay, and they couldn’t come out. He saw what emotional toll it took on them. I know my father adored Tony Perkins. My father felt he was a hell of an actor.”

After rushes of the film were shared, the advance praise of his performance became so strong that Paramount took an interest in him. They soon after signed him under 7 year semi-exclusive contract, which gave him room to return to Broadway.

He was their last matinee idol, labeled the “$15 million gamble.”

Perkins’s 1957 biopic about Boston Red Sox baseball player Jimmy Piersall entitled Fear Strikes Out. It followed his father’s pressure to become legendary baseball player and how it led to his highly publicized mental breakdown, as well as detailing his efforts to get better in a mental institution.

The set of the film was hostile with homophobia, which put Perkins on edge so much that the cast and crew feared he was  having mental breakdown while filming the scene. Although he wasn’t nominated for Oscars, his performance was praised by critics. The HR proclaimed: “Every recent young star has been compared to James Dean. From now on the standard is Tony Perkins.”

Western: The Lonely Man

After this critical success, Perkins starred in the Western The Lonely Man (1957), with Jack Palance. Perkins played Riley Wade, whose father, Jacob (Palance), abruptly returns to his life after having abandoned his mother years before. Jacob fights with Riley’s hatred for him throughout the film, desperate to reconnect with his estranged son after years of separation.

KimStanley, previous costar of Perkins’s, was originally cast as his love interest but was replaced last-minute by Elaine Aiken in her film debut. The film set was riddled with tensions, most of which spawned from Palance’s ultra-masculinity and Perkins’s lack thereof.  This was only heightened when filming was put behind schedule by an abrupt weather crisis that prevented outdoor production for a number of days. Still, a feeling of vitality remained. “We all thought this was an important picture we were making.”

The Tin Star

Perkins’s next Western, The Tin Star (1957) was with Henry Fonda. Originally, despite his popularity, Perkins was not wanted: “The producers, Bill Perlberg and George Seaon, told someone who told someone who told someone who told me that they wouldn’t have me in their picture for a million dollars,” Perkins admitted during filming. However, he auditioned for them as soon as he heard the news.

In the film, Perkins played yet another pacifist, this time a sheriff named Ben Owens. After encountering an experienced bounty hunter, Morgan Hickman (Fonda), Ben has to prove himself worthy of his title in an ironic reflection of Perkins’s troubles with Paramount. Perkins and Fonda took the hours-long drive out to set together in the same car, during which they became closely acquainted and shared stories of their private lives. Cast members speculate that Perkins confided in Fonda about his sexuality during these drives. The film grossed over $1 million in the box office and was one of the biggest films of 1957. It is now considered a classic of the genre.

Friendly Persuasion opened globally to critical and commercial success. The film was largely praised by critics, who took a liking to Perkins. The film earned him the Globe for Best New Actor and nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Perkins released 3 pop music albums and several singles in 1957 and 1958 on Epic and RCA Victor under the name Tony Perkins.

His single “Moon-Light Swim” was a moderate hit in the United States, peaking at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1957. 1958’s “The Prettiest Girl in School,” though a flop in the US, was also popular in Australia.

He was inspired to pursue musical endeavors after the abrupt success of his then-partner Tab Hunter, who had scored a number one hit on his debut record, “Young Love.”

Perkins was often heard joking “that his tremulous voice could make any happy love song sound sad.” However, Perkins was not committed to music career, though he produced full-length albums and a few EP’s until as late as the mid-1960s.

Perkins did not choose to act in a musical when he exerted the freedom of his contract in 1957 and returned to Broadway in Look Homeward, Angel.

The play was an autobiographical coming-of-age story about its writer, Thomas Wolfe, and he took on the role of Eugene Gant, with his mother played by Jo Van Fleet. The play enjoyed a successful run, and in 1958, he was nominated for Tony for Best Actor in Play, though the rehearsals were tumultuous. Van Fleet developed reputation for her standoffish behavior and temper tantrums, leading to contention on the set.

A restrained performance from Perkins that Tab Hunter picked up on: Backstage, Tony asked what I thought of his performance, and I told him straight: “You’re afraid to give vent to what you’re truly feeling,” I said. “You’re only showing the side of yourself you want other people to see.” … When I saw Look Homeward, Angel the second time, in late January, Tony had stripped away all preconceived ideas and was mesmerizing.

Perkins, who had a dressing room far from the stage, often had to race between scenes in order to retrieve something so as not to miss his cue, something his costars utilized in practical jokes. They turned the backstage area into an obstacle course, seeing if Perkins could get back to the curtain in time. Reportedly, he never missed his entrances. On the day of his final performance, they went through with the prank as planned, watching Perkins leap over objects and dodge barriers. Once he made it through, he was greeted with a sign that said “We love you, Tony!”

Perkins teamed up again with Van Fleet in This Angry Age (1958), also known as The Sea Wall, for Columbia, replacing James Dean (Van Fleet had played Dean’s mother in East of Eden). The story followed a mother who, unlike her restless children, attempts to cling onto her dissipating rice farm in southeast Asia. He also starred Desire Under the Elms (1958) for Paramount with Sophia Loren and was her first American screen kiss. As Loren remembered in 2014 memoir, “Perkins was as neurotic and handsome as we all remember him in a later film Psycho. A gentle, polite, somewhat sullen young man, he didn’t know how to hide his restlessness. Between us there was  certain complicity. He helped me with my English, and I tried to make him laugh.”

Between Desire and his next movie, Perkins got offer to appear in the 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe. He was given the role of Shell Oil Junior and Frank Sinatra was considered as his companion. Both dress up in drag in order to board an all-women train car. Paramount, despite the appeal of a big star like Monroe, balked at the idea of having their already sexually-ambiguous heartthrob wear drag and forbade Perkins from accepting the role. It ultimately went to Tony Curtis instead.

Studio execs asked Perkins to return from Broadway to star in The Matchmaker (1958) alongside Shirley MacLaine and Shirley Booth, during which he and male companion dress up in women’s clothing to escape restaurant undetected. Perkins was given $75,000 for ten weeks’ work, while MacLaine only got $25,000 for the same number of days. Although Perkins protested MacLaine’s smaller salary, no changes were made.

The Matchmaker was non-musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s play, where Dolly Gallagher Levi (Booth) attempts to set up rich businessman Horace Vandergelder (Paul Ford) with younger woman, Irene Malloy (MacLaine). Vandergelder’s employees, Cornelius Hackl (Perkins) and Barnaby Tucker (Robert Morse), tired of their poor wages and constant work, escape to New York City and meet Irene, who’s led to believe Cornelius is rich. Cornelius slowly falls in love with Irene while deceiving her. Morse had been a part of the original Broadway cast of the show, and he bonded with Perkins over the shared background. (Perkins would later disclose that Morse was bisexual, implying that they became confidants of sorts.)Perkins, however, intensely disliked MacLaine even after defending her from studio bosses and was put on edge by her intense drive and numerous pranks. “I’ve never been allowed that precious moment of seeing what Tony Perkins really is,” MacLaine later reported. “I don’t know what’s an act and what isn’t an act.”

Paramount took Perkins’s status as teen idol further and cast him as Hepburn’s love interest in Green Mansions (1959), one of her few flops.

It was based on an explorer who stumbles upon both a girl who lives in the woods and the Native Americans nearby who want to kill her. The film was originally intended for Elizabeth Taylor in 1953, though plans were abandoned.

In 1958, Mek Ferrer picked the film up for MGM, and Hepburn (his wife) was cast as the mystical Rima to secure funding. Perkins, still stinging after being forced to lose the role in Some Like it Hot, was then cast. It would be the only film in which Ferrer would direct his wife.

Paramount used the film to promote Perkins’s dwindling masculinity, showing him shirtless and exerting “ability” to kill men visually stronger than him. He received a reprieve to sing “Green Mansions,” the title song. Speaking about the movie Perkins said, “Hepburn was wonderful to work with, like a real person, almost a sister … The film was good but unusual.”

On the Beach (1959) did little to promote his teen idol status, and was his last serious film before the legendary Psycho Psycho performance later that year. He played a doomed father living in Australia after a nuclear war wipes humanity off all other continents. He supported legendary actors such as Peck, Gardner, Astaire. in first dramatic role. All filming took place in Melbourne on-location over the course of three months, and a soundstage was made out of a warehouse for the crew’s use.

Unlike other films, Perkins got on well with fellow cast members and even helped Astaire prepare for serious scenes. In infamous interview with People, Perkins would list Gardner as the first of many females who tried to put the make on him, although due to his sexuality, he declined.

Tall Story (1960) was best remembered for Jane Fonda’s film debut, and he had to play a college basketball champion. As a man who had never been talented in sports, he had to be trained to play basketball for his performance, but, unlike his teachings on the set of Fear Strikes Out, the lessons were able to stick. Perkins recounted to reporters, “I’ve been working out at the Warner gym, discovering what basketball is all about. I spend about an hour and a half a day dribbling, passing, shooting baskets, and going after rebounds … It’s a good game. Like chess in a way.”

Also unlike Fear Strikes Out, the set of Tall Story was hospitable to him from what he could see. Since Perkins had already worked with her father, he and Fonda had a connection, though not many could foresee the chemistry they would have both on- and off-screen.

As Fonda later recounted to P. Bosworth, “Tony Perkins told me, ‘Forget about the lights, just forget about the lights.’ And I did.  He taught me fascinating things, like the audience’s eyes always move to the right side of the screen so you should always try to get on the right side of the set.” Fonda also credits solely Perkins for helping her learn how to play before the camera when acting.

Fonda also developed a crush on Perkins. Perkins would recall  when she sat in his dressing room, completely naked, powdering her body.  Fonda, unlike others, was actually understanding of his homosexuality and became good friends with whomever he was seeing at the time. Behind the scenes, however, there was more turmoil: Fonda would recall, “Both Josh Logan (the director) and I were in love with Tony Perkins, and so that caused a problem.

After being signed in 1955, Perkins became Paramount’s last matinee idol, and he was promoted as that image through string of leading man-roles on screen.

Once he had finished 3 films for the studio, they had already invested 15 million in him before any motion pictures was even released. This would begin the infamous tension between Perkins and Paramount.

Perkins believed Paramount was ruining his career. Although he was given the option to do Broadway performances, his fame stemmed from his performances on-screen, where Paramount was pushing him into leading-man roles. Perkins, however, wanted only to be serious actor, not a teen idol. The preoccupation with keeping Perkins’s masculinity intact led to him losing coveted roles, such as Shell Oil Junior in Some Like it Hot and Tony in West Side Story.

Barney Balaban, president of Paramount, strongly disliked Perkins due to his homosexuality and femininity. They constantly had arguments, mostly revolving around his sexuality and ongoing relationship with fellow actor Tab Hunter, which Balaban believed Perkins flaunted too much. He constantly pressured Perkins into breaking up with Hunter and going into conversion therapy for the five years Perkins was under contract with the studio. A later collaborator of Perkins’s remembered to Charles Winecoff in 1996, “Tony said one thing that always endeared him to me … that when he was a rising young star at Paramount, he was seeing a great deal of [Tab Hunter], they went around town together, and finally the big studio head called him in and said, ‘You cannot do this anymore. We’re going to make you a star, and you can’t be seen around town with this guy. You’ve got to get a girl, you’ve got to stop seeing him.’ Tony replied, ‘But I love him!”—which left the studio head speechless—and walked out”. Hunter remembered a similar scenario: “Warner never said a word about my sexuality, and that’s just the way I wanted it. However, Paramount did have something to say about my relationship with Tony, and they told him they didn’t want him to see me anymore … Despite the opposition we did continue seeing each other.”

Perkins, until 1959, withstood Balaban’s threats of expulsion and protected his homosexual preference from his studio boss.

It was not until Tall Story and Psycho that studio execs succeeded in separating Perkins and Hunter, which many believe was major factor into Perkins buying himself out of his Paramount contract early, just like Hunter had done at Warner.

Perkins in youth had a boyish, earnest quality, reminiscent of the young James Stewart, which Hitchcock exploited and subverted when the actor starred in Psycho. Hitchcock would later say that he’d had Perkins cast ever since seeing him in Friendly Persuasion.

Marion Crane, a young woman who steals forty thousand dollars from her work and flees to the Bates Motel, run by Norman Bates (Perkins), where she is murdered in her room’s shower. The film culminates with the revelation that Bates’s mother has been dead for ten years and that Bates has been dressing up and even assuming her personality. This leads him to murder all young girls he’s attracted to, including Marion, under the “Mother” personality.

Perkins was involved in the 1960 Broadway musical Greenwillow, written by Frank Loesser. The plot followed the magical town of Greenwillow, where the men are meant to wander and women (if they can keep their husbands) are supposed to settle down and have children. Despite his call to isolation, Gideon Briggs (Perkins) wants to marry his sweetheart, Dorie (Ellen McCown). Loesser caught onto Perkins’s homosexuality fast and, disliking him for it, decided to upstage him, writing his main solo, “Never Will I Marry,” as something reminiscent of an opera ballad.

Perkins was nominated for another Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Psycho was also a trial, although not due to homophobia. Even though Perkins would end the film in very sloppy drag (wearing a dress and wig in order to look like his mother), Paramount was more disgusted by the idea that the film would feature the first shot of toilet when Marion flushes evidence of embezzlement.

The film was also made cheaply: both Perkins and Leigh accepted low salaries, and the crew was reused from A. Hitch Presents. Even the famous shower scene, where Marion is stabbed to death, did not feature the two main actors, since Perkins was in New York for Broadway rehearsals and Leigh’s body-double was used for many of the shots.

Psycho was a critical and commercial success, and it gained Perkins international fame for his performance as the homicidal owner of the Bates Motel. His performance gained the Best Actor Award from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers.

The role and multiple sequels affected the remainder of his career

After buying himself out of his Paramount contract, Perkins moved to France and began making European films, the first of which was Goodbye Again (1961) with Ingrid Bergman, which was shot in Paris.

It centered around a May-December romance. Paula Tessier (Bergman) tries to resist the charms of Philip Van der Besh (Perkins), who is the son of one of her clients, while stuck in an unfulfilling affair with a cheating businessman (Yves Montand). It was originally entitled Time on Her Hands, although Perkins suggested the English title Goodbye Again after one of his father’s plays.^[90] Perkins found himself subjected to the romantic attention of his female costar, although he customarily declined. Despite any off-screen tension this might have caused, Perkins’s role was greatly praised and earned him the Cannes Fest Award.

Perkins returned to America to appear in a short-lived Broadway play, Harold (1962), though returned to Europe shortly thereafter. He was cast in Phaedra (1962), in Greece with Melina Mercouri and directed by Jules Dassin, which was undoubtedly inspired by Mercouri’s recent success in Never on Sunday.

It was a modern retelling of a Greek tragedy where Alexis (Perkins) falls in love with Phaedra (Mercouri), who is also his stepmother. When asked about Perkins, Mercouri fondly said, “Ah, Tony. He is attractive to women. He is dangerous to women. When you touch him, he goes away a little. He is an eel. Raf Vallone [who played Perkins’s father and Mercouri’s husband in the film] is a good-looking man, but Perkins … Ah, I’d pick Perkins any time.” Perkins’s role in the film was met with praise.^[91]

Five Miles to Midnight (1962), his second picture with Sophia Loren, Lisa (Loren), who believes her husband, Robert (Perkins), died in a plane crash. When he reveals he is still alive, he urges her to instead collect the life-insurance money from his death. The film was a major shift away from the romantic leads he’d played in Goodbye Again and Phaedra and leant more toward his Psycho persona. Filming began under the title All the Gold in the World, and Perkins reportedly only signed onto the picture after hearing Loren had replaced the previously cast Jeanne Moreau as his coerced wife.

The production process was captured on video for the documentary The World of Sophia Loren, where she and Perkins can be seen laughing between takes, practicing scenes, solving puzzles, and singing the popular “After I’m Gone” (ironically, Tab Hunter had covered the song in 1958). The film was a moderate success.

Perkins continued with his mentally disturbed performances in Orson Welles‘s version of The Trial (1962), based on the Kafka novel about Joseph K, a man who’s arrested and attempts to figure out what his crime is and how to defend himself. Perkins did not mind the typecasting as long as he was able to work with Welles, who personally wanted him to play the lead. To discuss the possibility of Perkins taking on the role, the two met on the stairs of Welles’s hotel. Perkins remembered, “[Welles] paid me the great compliment of saying he would like to know whether I would make the picture because if I wasn’t going to make it, he wasn’t going to make it either.”^[95] It is likely Welles was trying to make his runaway hit like Psycho, but even if that was the purpose, Perkins did not seem to mind. “He’s the best there is,” Perkins said of Welles. “He’s wonderfully sure of himself and his ability without being dictatorial and autocratic about it … [H]e isn’t inflexible.”^[95] The film quickly went over-budget, although this did little to alter Perkins’s vision of his director. In fact, during the process of filming, his admiration for Welles only seemed to stiffen: during filming, he even considered writing a book about Welles and his career, even going as far as to carry a tape recorder in his coat pocket for weeks, though he abandoned it in fear of offending his boss. Welles later said to Perkins, “Oh, why didn’t you [do it]? Why didn’t you? I would have loved it!”

Besides Perkins’s abandoned plan to write a book about Welles, there was genuine affection between the two. Welles remembered Perkins fondly: “A strange thing happened with [The Trial]: it got wonderful press, all over the world, even in America. Even in Time and Newsweek. And Perkins got very bad press, all over the world, and the entire blame for that is mine, because he is a superlative actor and he played the character that I saw as K, and paid the price because nobody else sees it my way … I recognize that I did Tony–who is one of the best actors we have–a great disservice, because he deserved to have made a tremendous success and if he didn’t with the critics the blame is one hundred percent with me.”^[97] Despite any regrets Welles might have had with his portrayal of Perkins and his character, the film was massive success and later became a cult classic. Welles stated after completing the film: “The Trial is the best film I have ever made”.^[98]

It was first of four collaborations of Perkins and Welles.

His next film, however, would be in Une ravissante idiote (1964) with Brigitte Bardot, which was a comedy. It followed a Russian spy (Perkins) who employs a gorgeous but dim-witted woman (Bardot) as his accomplice in procuring secret documents. Perkins made history as the first American actor to play B.B.’s love interest,^[101] although Perkins would later openly admit Bardot was his least favorite costar, calling her “Bardot-do-do.”^[71] Bardot was another woman on Perkins’s roster of suitors, although Perkins always denied Bardot’s invitations to her penthouse. Perkins was incredibly uncomfortable around Bardot, ^[102] which was drastically different from his behavior around his previous (older) costars.

After Une ravissante idiote failed at the box office, Perkins made a movie in Mexico, The Fool Killer (1965). An art film, the motion picture followed a 12-year-old boy (Edward Albert) who wanders the Civil War-ravaged South with a philosophical axe murderer (Perkins), and was Perkins’s second film to about the American civil war. The film was well-received but was not overly popular at the box office,^[104] and Perkins returned to France for a cameo in Is Paris Burning? (1966), a war film about the liberation of Paris in 1944 at the hands of the French Resistance. This was his second Welles collaboration and reunited him with director René Clément, who had had the same occupation over Perkins in 1957’s This Angry Age. In addition, Perkins’s friend, Gore Vidal, wrote the script.^[105] The epic was star-studded and bore a hefty budget, which was partially the reason for its failure at the box office.

Return to the US

 Perkins returned to America to star in the musical alongside Charmian Carr, fresh off her success in The Sound of Music. The plot followed Charles Snell, a struggling poet who decides to live in a department store by night and pretend to be a mannequin by day. He encounters a secret society, the Dark Men, that already had the idea, and falls in love with Ella Hawkins (Carr), who is the maid of the society’s leader and is forbidden from speaking to Snell. If they attempt to leave the department store, the Dark Men will kill them and turn them into mannequins.

Filming was quick and on a low budget, though they were able to shoot in color. The department store was originally set in a Macy’s, though the company decided they did not want to be associated with such a dark theme and the filming was moved to a Stern Brothers department store (which closed in 1969). Just like Idiote , Carr developed a crush on Perkins and flirted with him constantly. He, once again, demurred.^[107]

The program was originally broadcast in full color, although the original color master has long since been lost. There are theories that an over-hyped Sondheim fan stole the master, though this is unconfirmed. Twenty minutes of silent color test footage exist and were released alongside a DVD in 2010. Sondheim referred to it as one of his favorite musicals he ever wrote, and announced Perkins as the lead of Company. Perkins, however, withdrew from the role, though he would remain a muse for Sondheim for years.

The plot revolved around Dennis Pitt (Perkins), a man who is on break from a psychotic hospital on parole who meets Sue Ann Stepenek (Weld). He tells her he is a secret agent and they go on “missions” together, culminating in their attack on a factory. This was the first of two films with Weld, whom he had dated in the early 60s, and they were reportedly chilly but respectable to each other on set.^[114] It wasn’t a box office success and Weld labeled it as her worst film, but has become a notable cult favorite.

1970s: Supporting roles

In the 1970s, Perkins moved into supporting roles in Hollywood-feature films. The first was 1970’s Catch-22, playing Chaplain Tappman. Although never explicit, Tappman inspires another male character to feel romantic attraction to him: “It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

This would mark the first of three films where Perkins played a homosexual character.

Filming Catch-22 proved to be a grueling endeavor, which left the cast stranded in Mexico for long periods of time. Perkins, however, attributed this experience with helping him open up and connect with people, especially those he didn’t know well. He was not fully surrounded by strangers, though: the film reunited him with both Welles and Martin Balsam, who had played the doomed detective Aborgast in Psycho ten years earlier.

Perkins’s next film was WUSA (1970), starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, where he made brief appearance. Many attributed his fleeting role to the fact that Perkins had befriended Newman and Woodward in the 50s and socialized with them in Europe in the 60s, although Perkins was praised for his performance of anxiety. This marked the first of two collaborations with Perkins and Newman. Off-Broadway, he appeared in and directed Steambath (1970).^[118]

Perkins shifted his focus away from movies briefly to star on the made-for-television film How Awful About Allan (1970), where he once again played a psychotic character. Although the film was insignificant at the time, it gained a cult following over the years.^[119] He returned to motion pictures soon after, assisting Charles Bronson in the French crime drama, Someone Behind the Door (1971), playing yet another mentally disturbed man. This was also an insignificant endeavor.

Sondheim-Perkins collaborations

In 1973, Perkins reunited with close friend Sondheim to co-write The Last of Sheila, a 1973 American neo noir mystery, directed by Herbert Ross. It was based on the games Perkins and Sondheim made up together and revolved around a movie producer who tries to discover who murdered his unfaithful wife by taking his rich friends on a maze through exotic locations, each with a piece of gossip applying to one of the other people aboard a yacht. The characters were influenced by people Perkins and Sondheim knew in real life:^[124] Tom Parkman, a closeted homosexual who’s married to another participant in the games, was based on Perkins himself; Phillip Dexter, a fledging film director once popular in his heyday but now resigned to directing television commercials, was based on Perkins’s close friend and frequent collaborator, Orson Welles; Christine, an obnoxious woman who was once an informer to the House of Un-American Actives, was based on film agent Sue Mengers; and Alice and Anthony Wood were based on Raquel Welch (who played Alice) and her then-husband Patrick Curtis.

The film was a commercial success–the most “highly plotted murder mystery film of all time” by critics. Perkins and Sondheim went on to share the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay for the film, which led them to try to collaborate again two more times. The next project was announced in 1975, entitled The Chorus Girl Murder Case. “It’s a sort of stew based on all those Bob Hope wartime comedies, plus a little Lady of Burlesque and a little Orson Welles magic show, all cooked into a Last of Sheila-type plot”, said Perkins.^[126] He later said other inspirations were They Got Me Covered, The Ipcress File and Cloak and Dagger.^[127] They had sold the synopsis in October 1974.^[128] At one point, Michael Bennett was to direct, with Tommy Tune to star.^[129] In November 1979, Sondheim said they had finished it.^[130] However, the film was never made.^[129] In the 1980s, Perkins and Sondheim collaborated on another project, the seven-part Crime and Variations for Motown Productions. In October 1984 they had submitted a treatment to Motown.^[131] It was a 75-page treatment set in the New York socialite world about a crime puzzle. Another writer was to write the script. It, too, was never made.^[132]

Perkins was one of many stars in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), adapted from a popular Agatha Christie novel. He played the suspicious McQueen, and was reunited with previous costars Ingrid Bergman (1961’s Goodbye Again) and Martin Balsam (1960’s Psycho), as well as being teamed up with legendary actors like Lauren Bacall. The film was a moderate success in the box office.^[133] Also in 1974, Perkins co-starred with Beau Bridges and Blythe Danner in Lovin’ Molly, a drama film where Perkins was once again directed by close friend Sidney Lumet.^[134] It had a budget of over 1.2 million dollars and was relatively well received.^[135]

He enjoyed success on Broadway in Peter Shaffer‘s 1974 play Equus (where he was a replacement in the leading role originally played by Anthony Hopkins). In the show, he played a psychiatrist who attempts to rid his patient of their unnatural obsession with horses, shedding his stereotypical performance as a mentally disturbed man. His role was received to rave reviews, perhaps some of the best of his Broadway career.^[136] He continued with his stage work and directed the Off-Broadway production The Wager (1974), which had an insignificant impact.^[137]

Perkins supported Diana Ross in the romantic drama Mahogany (1975), where he played photographer bent on making a young model (Ross) into a star. Perkins and Ross were good friends on set, to the point where Perkins’s wife joked about them running off together, though this did not expel any strain from production. Perkins’s photographer character, Sean, was rewritten shortly before filming began to capitalize on his Psycho persona. This was made worse by the fact that the once explicitly gay character was now simply queer-coded, as well as being written in a homophobic way.^[138] It was because of this and other factors that Perkins thought the film was mediocre, though it performed incredibly well at the box office, setting attendance records shortly after its relea

Perkins hosted television’s Saturday Night Live in its first season in 1976. During his hour-long special, he poked fun at his serious image, crying out for his “good luck panties.” He briefly addressed the audience during his opening monologue, thanking them for seeing “the real Tony Perkins,” before launching into a skit about Norman Bates’s School for Motel Management, reprising his infamous role from Psycho. He also played a singing psychiatrist (perhaps influenced by Equus, something also mentioned in his opening monologue) and a victim in numerous pretend horror films. Towards the end of the program, Perkins posed and chatted with The Muppets.

Two years after his SNL appearance, Perkins co-starred with Geraldine Chaplin in Remember My Name (1978). Perkins plays the husband of his real-life wife, Berry Berenson. Perkins’ character is besieged by his ex-spouse (Chaplin) who has just been released from prison and is bent on getting him back.^[141] Director-writer Alan Rudolph described it as “an update of the classic woman’s melodramas of the Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford era.”^[142]

The picture was surprisingly popular and well-received. They also praised both Perkins’s and Chaplin’s performances as “extraordinary.”^[143] The film was nominated for and won numerous accolades and has developed cult following over the years.

After Remember My Name‘s surprising success, Perkins had more roles on television, playing Mary Tyler Moore‘s husband in First, You Cry (1978),^[144] a biographical drama film based on the 1976 autobiography of NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin recounting her battle with breast cancer.^[145]

The film was nominated for numerous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Made for Television and numerous Primetime Emmy‘s.^[146] In 1979, it was parodied on an episode of SNL with a sketch entitled “First He Cries.” It follows a husband (Bill Murray) who’s distraught over his wife’s (Gilda Radner) mastectomy. The sketch was poorly received, resulting in over 200 calls and 300 letters of complaint.^[147] However, it cemented the TV film’s popularity in the eyes of the public.

After the success of First, You Cry, Perkins continued on his television streak when he played Javert in Les Misérables (1978)^[148] based on the famous 1,000-page novel about the French Revolution. The adaptation has received a cult following through the years. He projected a more kid-friendly light when he was featured in Walt Disney‘s science fiction film The Black Hole in 1979, where he reunited with crew members from Fear Strikes Out, whom he hadn’t seen in twenty-two years. Just like Les Mis, this film also developed a cult status with sci-fi fans.^[149]

Shortly thereafter, Perkins returned to the boards in another Broadway success with Bernard Slade‘s 1979 play Romantic Comedy, who was the famed author of Same Time, Next Year. He played playwright Jason Carmichael who meets Phoebe Craddock (Mia Farrow) and falls in love with her, and they decide to work together on a production. The show was a wild success and ran for 396 performances.^[150] The New York Post wrote: “A darling of a play … zesty entertainment of cool wit and warm sentiment.”

1980s

Perkins was villain in the actioner North Sea Hijack (1980), starring Roger Moore, and one of many names in Winter Kills (1980). The latter was a comedy based on the attempts to assassinate President Kegan in an (unintentionally) humorous parody of President John F. Kennedy. Other costars included Elizabeth Taylor and Dorothy Malone, as well as his wife Berry Berenson. The film was a box office bomb, losing four million dollars in performances. It was received somewhat warmly by critics.^[151]

After the star-studded satire, he also starred in the 1980 Canadian film Deadly Companion (also known as Double Negative) with famous comic actor John Candy, with whom Perkins got on well on-set. It was largely disregarded by the public and even more so by critics.^[152] The attention it did receive was bleak, save for some kind remarks for Perkins. Spies and Sleuths called the movie “a muddle film that cannot untie its tangled skein of a plot, although a Perkins performance is always worth watching.”^[153] Another nice review for Perkins came from Starburst: “This convoluted thriller is not without its merits (not least some clever dialogue and well observed performances by, among others, Anthony Perkins.)”^[154]

Later that same year, former partner Tab Hunter met Perkins at his Mulholland Drive home, accompanied by the latter’s wife and children, asking him to star in Lust in the Dust. Lust was a Western and spoof of Duel in the Sun, and Hunter’s love interest would be played by drag performer Divine, whom he had already caused a stir with in John Waters‘s Polyester. Hunter’s partner and future husband, Allan Glaser, who was a producer on the film, requested that Perkins should play the villain Hardcase Williams, something Hunter believed was influenced by the sudden success of Psycho II. Glaser knew nothing of Hunter’s past with Perkins. “I tried to convince him to [do the film],” Hunter remembered, “… but he denied I choose not to think about the reasons for his turning down what would have been a wonderful role. When Tony and I said good-bye that afternoon, I was sincerely happy for him … It would be the last time we ever saw each other.”

After turning down Lust, Perkins went to Australia to appear in TV mini-series For the Term of His Natural Life in 1983.

The show was produced in three-parts, with an overall runtime of 6 hours, following an educated, adventurous British aristocrat Richard Devine. The show was well-received by critics, becoming the eleventh highest rated Australian mini series on Sydney television between 1978 and 2000, with a rating of 37, and the third highest on Melbourne television with a rating of 45.^[156] After that was The Glory Boys (1984) for British television, a thriller miniseries with Rod Steiger. There was an intense dislike between Perkins and Steiger after the latter received a larger trailer, and Steiger labeled Perkins as “so jittery and jinxed by the chemicals he was taking.”

However, there has been no evidence suggesting Perkins was on drugs while making the picture.

After his feud with Rod Steiger on the set of Glory, Perkins found nicer movie set when he made Crimes of Passion (1984) for Ken Russell.

The film centered around a minister who attempts to rid a sultry woman of her sexual ways, but the movie was proved so explicit that it retained an X-rating for its first cut. The motion picture was majorly edited and received an R-rating instead. Although Perkins believed the editing ruined the film, it has become a cult favorite.^[159]

He then starred in and directed Psycho III (1986), in which Norman Bates falls in love with a nun who comes to the Bates Motel, which was less successful (critically and commercially) than its preceding sequel. This led to bouts of diminished self-confidence, though it did not mark the end of his directorial career.

After the disappointing Psycho III, Perkins returned to TV and had supporting role in Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987), based on Napoleon Bonaparte‘s romance with Joséphine de Beauharnais, where Perkins played diplomat Talleyrand. The show was poorly received,^[161][162] but was nominated for two Emmys.^[163]

Perkins drastically changed genres for his next project, the slasher film Destroyer (1988), where he once again had a supporting role. Perkins was praised for his role, but the overall film was deemed a disappointment.

Perkins disappeared briefly from the screen, directing but not appearing in the comedy Lucky Stiff (1988), which was a humorous take on cannibalism and incest. While a box office failure, the film developed a cult following due to its quotable dialogue and exposure in Fangoria, who did a feature on the film.

1990s

Following his directorial pursuit, Perkins starred in horror films, including Edge of Sanity (1989), Daughter of Darkness (1990), and I’m Dangerous Tonight (1990). He found a reprieve while filming the pilot for the light-hearted show The Ghost Writer about a horror novelist named Anthony Strack (Perkins) who is haunted by his deceased wife after he remarries. The pilot ended with Perkins finishing the manuscript of his next novel, which was based on a supernatural encounter he had with the ghost of his wife. The pilot never sold.^[167]

He gave in to typecasting and played Norman Bates again in the made-for-cable film Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). His first son, Oz Perkins, made his film debut in the prequel as a young Norman Bates.^[168] It was on the set of this film that Perkins learned he was HIV-positive, though he hid the disease from the public.^[169]

Perkins appeared in 6 TV productions between 1990 and 1992 while privately battling with AIDS, including Daughter of Darkness (1990) and hosting a 12-episode horror anthology series titled Chillers (1990).

He made his final appearance in In the Deep Woods (1992) with Rosanna Arquett, released posthumously.

These appearances tied back into horror, solidifying the typecast role.

Missed roles

Perkins was offered the lead role in Dancing in the Checkered Shade, a John Van Druten play. “I had little money and was practically set for Dancing in the Checkered Shade,” Perkins recalled in 1956. “My agents were split in their decisions. New York said I should stay and do the play. Hollywood said I should come out and do [Friendly Persuasion]. It was like flipping a coin. So I took the picture.” Dancing never made it to Broadway, while Friendly Persuasion earned Perkins an Oscar nomination and Hollywood stardom.

There were rumors that Perkins’s East of Eden loss led Elia Kazan, the film’s director, to give Perkins the role of Tom Lee in Tea and Sympathy, the Broadway play he was directing, though Kazan himself dismissed those notions as “bullshit.”(Perkins, however, would be chosen over Dean for Friendly Persuasion and replaced him after his death in This Angry Age.)

Perkins was optioned as the lead in Harold Robbins‘s A Stone for Danny Fisher, but he was not interested in the film and turned it down. It would later be known as King Creole, a musical vehicle for popular teen idol and pop singer Elvis Presley, whom Perkins was sometimes mistaken for.^[172]

Perkins was offered the role of Shell Oil Jr. in the 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, which Monroe was reportedly excited about. Perkins, however, was forced to decline the opportunity by Paramount Studios executives, who did not want Perkins, who was already sexually ambiguous, in drag for a film.^[69]

• Perkins, just as he was signed onto the commercially, critically, and culturally significant Psycho, was encouraged to take the title role in a 20th-Century Fox biographical film, Dooley, who just happened to be gay. Tea and Sympathy‘s Robert Anderson wrote the script, and Greenwillow‘s George Roy Hill and Tall Story‘s Joshua Logan had expressed an interest in directing the film. Jack Lemmon and Montgomery Clift were also strong contenders for the main role. Perkins, however, was not allowed to audition after Paramount balked at the production cost.^[173]
• Perkins was seriously considered for the role of Tony in the 1961 adaptation of West Side Story, although Paramount forced Perkins to rescind his audition as well. This instead would plant the seeds of Perkins’s lifelong friendship with West Side Story‘s writer, Stephen Sondheim.^[81]
• Perkins was the first choice of Tennessee Williams and the play’s director, Tony Richardson, in the 1963 Broadway revival of Williams’s play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore with Tallulah Bankhead. As Tab Hunter remembered, “Tony [Perkins] suggested me to Richardson after a scheduling conflict kept him from playing the part. This gesture meant the world to me … but in a very classy move, neither Richardson or Perkins ever let on that I wasn’t the first choice. It would be many years before I learned the truth, too many to be able to thank my old friend.”^[174] The show, partly due to the then-recent assassination of United States president John F. Kennedy which kept people inside, closed after three performances.
• Perkins was cast as Robert, the lead role, in the Stephen Sondheim-penned Company, which Perkins declined due to scheduling conflicts. Later in life, Perkins attributed his refusal to anxiety as well: “I had signed up to do the lead in Company and suddenly this specter rose up in front of me–of performing again for a year and a half–and I dreaded it.” Some people also believed his refusal was because Robert was a seemingly flamboyant character.^[108]
• Perkins, after cowriting the script of the movie with Stephen Sondheim, was encouraged to take the role of Clinton, the lead antagonist, in The Last of Sheila (1973). Sondheim was one of the major supporters of this casting, seeing Perkins as perfect for the role. Perkins, however, thought it played too much into his already-established deranged persona and passed it up to James Coburn instead.^[175]
• Perkins played a horror writer, Anthony Strack, in the television pilot for the show The Ghost Writer, which Perkins was enthusiastic about in terms of its prospects, believing it would be the perfect way for him to transition into more comical roles on both stage and screen. The pilot never sold.^[167]
• Perkins agreed to provide the voice for the role of the dentist, Dr. Wolfe, in The Simpsons episode “Last Exit to Springfield“, but died before the part could be recorded. The character was voiced by Simpsons regular Hank Azaria.^[176]