Osgood Perkins Parents A Hollywood Love Story Cut Short by Tragedy

Filmmaker Osgood “Oz” Perkins has crafted a career exploring the most obscure facets of the human psyche. Perkins is well-known for his skill in the horror genre, and his films frequently mirror his own life, which is characterized by a special blend of complicated family dynamics and intense grief. Osgood’s path through the arts has been influenced by tragedy, loss, and an unwavering desire to comprehend his place in a turbulent legacy. He is the son of two legendary figures in the entertainment industry, photographer Berry Berenson and actor Anthony Perkins.

Renowned for his iconic performance as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, Anthony Perkins rose to fame in the film industry. Off-screen, though, his life was much more complicated. Despite becoming well-known for playing the terrifying killer in Psycho, he struggled with his sexual identity and other issues in his personal life. This role played a significant part in defining Perkins’ career, but he also had to deal with a very public and frequently painful battle with his identity, which he kept mostly hidden throughout his life. Many aspects of his personal life, including the painful disclosure of his sexual orientation, came to light after his death in 1992 from complications related to AIDS.

Osgood’s mother, Berry Berenson, was a gifted photographer and model, but she also had a complicated life. As a photographer, Berenson’s work appeared in some of the most prominent magazines, such as Newsweek and Vogue. Her role as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks, is perhaps what made her most famous. Osgood’s already traumatic personal history was further compounded by the fact that she passed away only nine years after her husband. The fact that Berenson’s ancestry is a diverse blend of French, Italian, Polish-Jewish, Russian-Jewish, and Swiss ancestry emphasizes the complexity of her life. She was also descended from the renowned fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the renowned astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, adding a creative and intellectual legacy to the family’s history.

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Growing up in a household marked by the shadows of Hollywood fame and personal struggles, Osgood Perkins was uniquely positioned to understand the intersection of public persona and private turmoil. His father’s role as Norman Bates in Psycho cast a long shadow over the family, and Osgood has been candid about how this influenced his own creative endeavors. In recent interviews, he shared that the hidden truths surrounding his father’s identity—such as Anthony Perkins’ battle with his sexuality and the complexities of his relationships—shaped much of Osgood’s approach to filmmaking. This exploration of duality, secrecy, and psychological depth has become a hallmark of his career.

While his father was a figure trapped in the horror genre, Osgood has found a way to take this legacy and use it as a springboard to create works that are strikingly original. Osgood’s directorial debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015), introduced his penchant for blending psychological horror with familial themes, something that clearly stems from his own upbringing. His 2020 film Gretel & Hansel offered a modern, eerie take on the classic fairy tale, exploring the ways in which familial bonds can become entanglements that prevent personal growth. These themes of psychological trauma and family dysfunction continue to resonate through his more recent works, like Longlegs (2024), which deals with dark family secrets and the consequences of hidden truths.

Yet, despite the incredibly personal nature of his films, Osgood is not one to dwell in darkness without reason. There’s an optimism in his work, a belief that by confronting the most difficult aspects of his past, he can make peace with them. For Osgood, the horror genre isn’t just about eliciting fear from an audience; it’s about facing the terrifying, often uncontrollable forces that shape one’s life—whether they are family legacies, societal expectations, or inner conflicts.

It’s through this lens that his work can be seen as both deeply personal and universally relatable. Osgood’s exploration of duality—the tension between the private and the public—mirrors his own journey to reconcile his family’s public image with his understanding of their private lives. His films have been remarkably effective at tapping into these complexities, blending a haunting atmosphere with the raw emotional truths that so often go unspoken.

In Osgood’s case, the intersection of family history and artistic expression has not only led him to create some of the most talked-about films of the past decade but has also given him a platform to process the grief and loss that have shaped his life. His works, such as I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) and The Monkey (2025), reveal a filmmaker who has embraced the darker corners of his personal history while using them as fuel for creative exploration.

As a filmmaker, Osgood Perkins has taken the skeletons of his family’s past—his father’s struggles, his mother’s tragic death, the weight of their legacies—and turned them into a unique cinematic voice. His films stand as a testament to the power of confronting one’s demons, not as an act of catharsis, but as an artistic journey. Through this process, Osgood has created a distinctive niche within the horror genre, one that speaks not only to the universal human experience of loss but also to the specific and deeply personal experience of growing up in the shadow of two larger-than-life figures.