He was able to land an occasional serious role, such as in the Broadway production Look Homeward, Angel, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award, and the 1959 film On the Beach with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Ava Gardner.

Many Browne & Nicholas alumni were looking forward to a future at Harvard University, and Perkins, whose grades were too low to qualify, was the only student persuaded to attend Rollins College in Florida, after a representative toured the school.

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.

Paramount, despite the appeal of a big star like Monroe, balked at the idea of having their already sexually-ambiguous heartthrob wear drag for an entire film and forbade Perkins from accepting the role.

of Thornton Wilder's stage play, in which Dolly Gallagher Levi (Booth) attempts to set up rich businessman Horace Vandergelder (Paul Ford) with a younger woman, Irene Malloy (MacLaine).

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.

[84] Perkins in youth had a boyish, earnest quality, reminiscent of the young James Stewart, which Alfred Hitchcock exploited and subverted when the actor starred as Norman Bates in the film Psycho (1960).

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).

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.

[117] After that, 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, this time opposite the gifted and acclaimed leading ladies Julie Harris and Joan Hackett.

Although the film was hardly a significant work at the time of its release, it eventually gained a minor cult following over the years, thanks in large part to its ubiquity as a result of its entering into the public domain, making it more and more available and accessible for future audiences.

The Chicago-Sun Times praised, "What makes the movie work so well on this difficult ground is, happily, easy to say: It has been well-written and directed, and Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins are perfectly cast as Maria and her friend B.Z.

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.

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 such as Lauren Bacall.

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.

"[140] After Remember My Name, Perkins had more roles on television, playing Mary Tyler Moore's husband in First, You Cry (1978),[141] a biographical drama film based on the 1976 autobiography of NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin recounting her battle with breast cancer.

[144] After the modest success of First, You Cry, Perkins continued on his television streak when he played Javert in Les Misérables (1978)[145] based on Victor Hugo's 2,000-page novel about the June Rebellion, opposite Richard Jordan as Jean Valjean.

He projected a more kid-friendly light when he was featured in Walt Disney's mammoth science fiction epic The Black Hole in 1979, where he reunited with crew members from Fear Strikes Out, whom he hadn't seen in twenty-two years.

After Winter Kills he also starred in the 1980 Canadian film Deadly Companion (also known as Double Negative) opposite Michael Sarrazin, Susan Clark, Kate Reid, and in a very small role, a soon-to-be famous comic actor John Candy, with whom Perkins got on well on-set.

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.

As Turner Classic Movies summarized: "A masterful character actor, Perkins' ability to convey mental instability in a fashion that was simultaneously disturbing, affecting, and darkly humorous made him a unique and valuable talent.

"[179] Although Hunter expressed similar doubts ("I began to wonder how much of his sheepish appeal was genuine," he wrote in 2005, "and how much was manufactured, used to mask very calculated, methodical intentions"[180]), he did believe overall that Perkins was dealing with a lot of backlash from Paramount over his sexuality, which therefore led him to become as brooding as he was.

As a mystery guest on the popular television program What's My Line?, in the Australian accent he had used during his most recent film, On the Beach, Perkins responded to a question asking if he was a movie star by saying, "That's a term I don't like."

As she was returning to her California home from a vacation in Cape Cod on American Airlines Flight 11, her plane was hijacked and crashed into North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone aboard.

"[206] According to the posthumous biography Split Image by Charles Winecoff, Perkins had exclusively same-sex relationships until his late 30s, including with actor Tab Hunter,[217] artist Christopher Makos,[210] and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale.

They nearly spoke a third time in 1992, as Hunter remembered: "I had a hunch to call [Perkins after hearing he was very sick with AIDS] and touch base, and when I picked up the phone, I heard on the radio that he'd passed away."

Sophia Loren remembered Perkins's dressing room for 1958's Desire Under the Elms as looking like a monk's cell, and she was often photographed smiling and laughing with him when they reunited in Europe a few years afterward.

"[264] Even fifty-five years after the film's release, Lil Wayne mentioned the iconic character on "Amazing Amy": "I'm Norman Bates and this bitch ain't normal, our kids gon' be nuts (Not the babies!).

[156] Perkins has also been considered an icon of the New York actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, often being compared to legendary performers Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and even James Dean, whom he was once set to replace.

Alongside famous Hollywood contemporaries such as Eartha Kitt, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis Jr., Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, and even Tab Hunter, Halsman's photo of a jumping Perkins has been widely reproduced and shared over the years.