Cinema symphony: Anthony Perkins

He was born: 04.04.1932

He died: 12.09.1992

Place of birth: New York

Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Anthony Perkins was an American actor, director, and singer. He played the role of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense thriller Psycho, which made him an influential figure in pop culture and in horror films.

"Psycho" gave Anthony one of the most stunning and effective portrayals found in a movie of this type. Impressively, the actor managed to chill and repel viewers. "Psycho" was a huge success and earned Perkins a great deal of attention, with much praise coming his way.

Anthony was wrestling with his own personal issues. He was gay & kept this a secret, a ruse aided by various industry people who arranged for him to be seen in photo ops with various lovely, single actresses. In reality, he had regular sexual liaisons turned relationship with actor Tab Hunter. In his diaries, Andy Warhol wrote that Perkins “used to hire hustlers to come in through the window and pretend to be robbers.”

In 1973, Anthony married Berry Berenson, a photographer and the sister of Marisa Berenson. The couple had met on the set of his film "Play it as it Lays" and would have two sons together.

During 1990 while undergoing treatment for Bell's palsy, he learned that he was HIV positive. Sadly, this came to his attention from an article in The National Enquirer while he stood in line at a grocery store checkout line. The tabloid was made aware of this by a medical attendant who had secretly submitted a sample of Perkins' blood and sold information about the results. Perkins at the time denied the claim, but a privately sanctioned test confirmed the results.

He kept his illness quiet and his wife and teenage sons were with him when he passed away at their home.

He issued a statement weeks before his death that read: "I chose not to go public about having AIDS because, to misquote ‘Casablanca’, 'I'm not much good at being noble,' but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of one old actor don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. 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.”

Cinema symphony