See Anthony Perkins' Horror Filmmaker Son, Who Looks Just Like Him
His eldest son is following in his horror icon footsteps.
Iconic horror actor Anthony Perkins cemented his legacy with his performance as Norman Bates in Psycho and its sequels. He starred in a number of other notable movies, including The Trial, Friendly Persuasion, Murder on the Orient Express, and Crimes of Passion. Anthony's prolific career is not the only legacy he left behind. The actor, who passed away in 1992, had two sons with actor Berry Berenson. His eldest son has followed in his footsteps by pursuing his own career in horror films. Read on to see Anthony's son, Oz Perkins.
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Anthony Perkins' son Oz Perkins started out as an actor.
Anthony's eldest son, 47-year-old Oz Perkins, has made a name for himself in the horror film genre. Oz got his start playing a younger version of his father's character in Psycho II. He had a fruitful acting career, appearing in a number of films, including Six Degrees of Separation, Legally Blonde, Not Another Teen Movie, Secretary, and the 2009 Star Trek.
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Oz transitioned from acting to writing and directing.
Oz made his directorial debut in 2015 with the horror film The Blackcoat's Daughter, which he also wrote. The movie starred Emma Roberts and Kiernan Shipka. After that, Oz stayed in the genre, directing I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel, and an episode of the 2020 reboot of The Twilight Zone.
In 2020, Oz told Screen Rant that acting was a "cop-out" for him. He thought he could easily fake it since he had done it in high school, and his father had been famous for the craft. "I felt like it would be free like I'm entitled to it, or something. It was impure, my desire to act. As such, it never felt right," Oz said. Once he removed himself from performing, he realized that the first thing he wanted to do was write, which led him to penning the script for The Blackcoat's Daughter.
"It was the first script I wrote by myself, for myself, with the idea of actually making it into a movie. And so, from there, it was about finding myself, 25 years later, knowing what I knew, and feeling what I had felt, and experiencing what I had experienced," Oz recalled. "To find my view, my take, my impressions of the world and people were far richer. It was almost like picking up from where I left off when I was a kid."
Both of Oz's parents have died.
Both of Oz's parents have passed. Anthony died of AIDS complications in 1992 when Oz was only 18 years old. Oz's mother, Berry Berenson, died during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. She was a passenger on the plane that hit the North Tower.
In 2017, Oz told the Associated Press that he was still working through his father's death. "There's a knot there which I think is obviously common for a lot of people, especially people whose parents die when they're young," he said. "There's a quality of like, 'Oh, the person is gone.' That's when finding out about them starts.'"
Oz also told Screen Rant in 2020 that the compounded grief of both of his parents' deaths was challenging. "My father died, and I had to deal and recover from that. And then my mother died, and I had to deal and recover from that," he said. "I suffered a couple of really staggering changes, let's say. 'Losses' is easy to say, but real course changes hit me from the side. I rambled for a long time."
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Anthony Perkins' second son, Elvis Perkins, is a singer-songwriter.
Anthony and Berenson had another son, 45-year-old Elvis Perkins. Elvis is a folk-rock singer-songwriter. He has released four albums, his first in 2006 and his most recent in 2020. He also worked with his brother as the composer for The Blackcoat's Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.
In 2020, Elvis told Americana U.K. that composing the score for Blackcoat's Daughter "was probably the single most challenging creative endeavor" he'd undertaken at the time. "The film is a slow-burning horror film, so it was a weeks-long exercise in creating tension and dissonance. Very psychologically trying, but I'm glad after the fact that the music exists," he added.
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