Flashback Friday Remembers Gay Actor Anthony Perkins

April 4, 2025
HANK ORSO

We love our queer celebrities, whether they were in the closet of years gone by, or are able to live their lives out and proud. Or maybe it's a bit of both, out to those close to them, but publicly closeted. That last scenario, in a fashion, was more the situation with gay actor Anthony Perkins, who would have celebrated his 93rd birthday today, April 4th. While he had affairs with many famous and more out men in the entertainment industry, his personal life was fraught with tension and not a little bit of self-loathing. More on that in a bit.

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If the name escapes you (shame on you!) then the face you must surely know. Perkins, after years of theater and film, accolades and awards, became best know since 1961 until his death as Norman Bates, the tortured momma's boy in Alfred Hitchcock's iconic film Psycho.

Perkins was born in 1932 in Manhattan, the son of a distant father who was an actor and an overly close mother. Of his relationship with his parents, Perkins told People in 2009, "I became abnormally close to my mother, 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." After his father did die when Perkins was a small boy, his mother's affections became disturbingly close. Bisexual herself, she was also physically affectionate with young Perkins. "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."

Such behavior mirrored the relationship of his most famous role, that of the put-upon and guilt-ridden Norman Bates, who has an unnatural relationship with his (dead) mother. She's such an ingrained influence on him that he dresses in her clothing. letting her take him over when he feels threatened by outside forces.

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When Norman speaks of everyone having secrets and everyone going "a bit mad sometimes," this mirrors Perkins's own relationship with his sexuality. He became fond of a young man in college in Florida, but the repression of the fifties led to gay classmates being outed and kicked out of school after a gay-bashing. He returned to New York where, after school, he found rewarding work in the theater, earning accolades and awards.

One of his first big Broadway roles was as Tom Lee in Tea and Sympathy, directed by the esteemed Elia Kazan. The role, like his later beloved Norman, would unwittingly mirror Perkins's personal life later to come. He played a "sissy" who was "straightened out" by the love of the right woman. It's homophobic in nature and in its conclusion, but the play was one of the first to address any type of gay discussion, and therefore became a huge hit with the gay community, and made Perkins a bit of a star.

How does this mirror his own life? After a string of notable and hush-hush affairs with men, Perkins underwent a version of conversion therapy in the 70's, which included electroshock therapy. He "went straight" and married photographer Berry Berenson. They had two sons, the filmmaker Osgood Perkins (director of the Nick Cage-starring Longlegs) and Elvis. They were together until his death of AIDS-related complications in 1992, a diagnosis he didn't learn about until it appeared on the cover of the tabloids, his bloodwork from a separate procedure being HIV tested without his consent, and the information of the result was sold without his knowledge. She would tragically die on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

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Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Stephen Sondheim, and Rudolf Nureyev were some of the gay men Perkins had intimate or very close relationships with. While starting out in Hollywood in the 50's he was Paramount's last teen idol, not only releasing a string of movies but also three pop records. The studio struggled with Perkins and his sexuality; he was out with the head of Paramount, who knew of his relationship with Hunter and worked to break them up. While the studio wanted to "masculinize" him by putting him in leading man roles, he was more interested in serious fare and showing his sensitive side. He would eventually work his way out of his Paramount contract.

While his career put him on screen with the likes of Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, and Audrey Hepburn among other Hollywood luminaries, he could never escape the reach of Norman Bates and his famous dead mother. He was often typecast in the roles of killers, psychotics, and the mentally maladjusted. His attempts to distance himself from the role proved futile, though, and with the popularity of Psycho 2 in 1982 and two more sequels, he decided it was time to embrace the role that put him on the horror map.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe Norman Bates was his form of therapy. He never became comfortable fully embracing his homosexuality, so maybe returning over and over again to a role with explores and exploits the stereotypes of weak boys and strong mothers, of men hiding secrets, of living that role very publicly and essentially hiding in plain sight allowed him some of the comfort he never found in real life.

Check out this deep dive analysis of Perkins/Bates.