Editing Anthony Perkins (section)

==== Film and Broadway debut ====
While still attending Rollins College, Perkins went to California over summer vacation, hoping to make it into the movies. Having heard that [[MGM]] was making a screen adaptation of ''Years Ago'', he lingered on the lot, hoping a casting director would spot him and offer him a screen test.{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=60}} As Perkins later recalled:
<blockquote>"I hung around the casting gate all summer, running errands and picking up sandwiches for the guards. One day they were testing [[Margaret O'Brien]] and they needed the back of someone's head. They didn't know who to use. Then someone piped up and said, 'How about that kid that's always hanging around here? We could use the back of ''his'' head!"</blockquote>

"They called me in and I stood right in front of the camera, almost obliterating poor Margaret O'Brien's face and causing a director to say 'Please move a little to the left.' When he said this, I turned around and said, 'Who, ''me''?' and I was in the test."{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=61}}

It was later that summer that Perkins learned he had been cast as Fred Whitmarsh in the film, now renamed ''[[The Actress]]'' (1953), alongside [[Jean Simmons]] and [[Spencer Tracy]]. He was also directed by [[George Cukor]], who was a friend and collaborator of his late father. In the film, he played a fumbling Harvard student who chases the interest of Ruth Gordon Jones (Simmons), who wants to perform onstage despite her family's disapproval.{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=69}} The film was a commercial disappointment, although it scored an [[Academy Award]] nomination for [[Academy Award for Best Costume Design|Best Costume Design]].

Perkins was first noticed when he replaced [[John Kerr (actor)|John Kerr]] on Broadway in the lead of ''[[Tea and Sympathy (play)|Tea and Sympathy]]'' in 1954, where he was directed by [[Elia Kazan]], who had been a friend of his father's. In the play, he took on the role of Tom Lee, a college student who is labelled as a "sissy" and fixed with the love of the right woman, in an almost autobiographical role.{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=68}} Perkins said years later, "It was the best part ever written for a young guy. I felt so involved with that particular play. In many ways, I ''was'' Tom Lee." 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.{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=77}} It was through this audience that the production became a success, and many people thought Perkins was substantially better than his predecessor, John Kerr, who went on to play the role in the [[Tea and Sympathy (film)|film adaptation]]. Joan Fickett, who played Perkins's love interest in the play, commented, "He was that boy. I'd seen John Kerr do it before, but Tony had a quality that was fantastic for the part—all the rawness and the hurt and the confusion, he just had. I found his performance tremendously poignant."{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|p=96}} The play's success and Perkins's performance renewed Hollywood's interest in him.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/14/obituaries/anthony-perkins-star-of-psycho-and-all-its-sequels-is-dead-at-60.html|title=Anthony Perkins, Star of 'Psycho' And All Its Sequels, Is Dead at 60|last=Myers|first=Steven Lee|date=September 14, 1992|work=The New York Times|access-date=October 26, 2017|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

According to posthumous biographer Charles Winecoff, it was during the production of ''Tea and Sympathy'' that Perkins was drafted, despite the recent conclusion of the Korean War. Without consulting anybody, he decided to tell the Selective Service he was a "practicing homosexual," which was an eligible way to be deemed unfit for service. Reportedly, this had disastrous results, leaving Perkins traumatized.{{sfn|Winecoff|1996|pp=92–93}}