Anthony Perkins: Split Image - Softcover

Paramount groomed him to replace the late James Dean and become Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob. But his landmark performance as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho killed that—and spawned an image of Anthony Perkins that eerily paralleled his conflicted, fractured off-screen life.

Anthony Perkins: Split Image insightfully and comprehensively documents the life of this great actor, who was forced to act the part of ladies’ man while privately struggling with his own homosexuality, and chronicles his complicated search for acceptance.

Newly revised and updated for this tenth anniversary edition, Anthony Perkins: Split Image is both a harrowing look at life in the Hollywood closet and a poignant human drama that will change your vision of Anthony Perkins forever.

“Riveting...With his laser-beam of an eye, Winecoff lights up the hidden corners of Hollywood’s golden age, as well as a dark age of homosexuality that needs to be understood by anyone who didn’t live through it....It’s a page-turner.” —James Gavin, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker

“Charles Winecoff is a clever biographer. With his inside, creepy examination of Anthony Perkins, I was mesmerized by a dude I never thought I’d be able to stomach for more than a paragraph. Well done.” —E!’s Ted Casablanca

"Anthony Perkins: Split Image is one of the deepest, darkest Hollywood stories ever told.” —Robert Hofler, author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson

“Told with empathy and a sagacious eye for detail, Winecoff’s lively chronicle of one of the screen’s more formidable, if underrated, leading men perhaps should have been called Brokeback Hollywood Hills.”—Stephen M. Silverman, author of David Lean and Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies

“An important chronicle of a time when gay was still the ultimate taboo, one that Hollywood had especially little use for as it aggressively sold illusion and lies.”—Michael Musto, from his Foreword

Charles Winecoff has written for many magazines, including Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, and The New Yorker. He currently works as Senior Writer on the long-running TV series E! True Hollywood Story. He lives in Los An