Anthony Perkins ‘was cursed’ from playing a Psycho character inspired by Ed Gein

The newest season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster dives into the shocking life of Ed Gein, the 1950s Wisconsin killer whose crimes inspired some of Hollywood’s scariest movies. But Monster: The Ed Gein Story doesn’t just focus on Gein digging up graves, it also shows how his story spilled over into Hollywood, especially on actor Anthony Perkins and the Psycho curse that followed him.

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Perkins plays Norman Bates, a motel owner with a creepy obsession with his mother. The character was directly inspired by Gein’s real-life fixation on his own mum.

Monster: The Ed Gein series shows Hitchcock and author Robert Bloch going through Gein’s crimes and turning them into Norman Bates. While the film made Hitchcock a legend, it left Perkins with something darker: A role he could never shake off.

Even decades later, Perkins’s son, filmmaker Oz Perkins, has described the Psycho role as “a curse”.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, he said: “In the mythology of my family, the Psycho thing was considered far more of a curse than not.” He explained that the role kind of froze his dad in time, always linked to Norman Bates.

Credit: Netflix

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Hollywood in the early 1960s wasn’t easy for Anthony Perkins. He had to hide his sexuality, even though he had long-term relationships with Tab Hunter and dancer Grover Dale. The show highlights the stress of living a secret life while the public expected him to be a certain kind of Hollywood star, which eventually led him to marry a woman to protect his image.

By the time Psycho became a cult hit, Perkins’s career was tied to the character that made him famous, and he played Norman Bates several more times.

So, was there really a Psycho curse? Maybe not in a spooky, supernatural way. But for Anthony Perkins, the role that made him famous also kept him stuck. What started with Ed Gein’s terrifying crimes ended up haunting one of Hollywood’s most memorable actors.

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Featured image credit: Netflix