In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the motel owner played by Anthony Perkins is Norman Bates.
Bates runs the isolated Bates Motel with his elderly mother, Norma. The film gradually reveals that his troubled relationship with her has shaped his violent behavior. Perkins’s performance made Bates one of the most recognizable characters in psychological horror.
Psycho was released in 1960 and was adapted from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel. Hitchcock used suspense, editing, and suggestion to make the Bates Motel shower scene one of cinema’s most influential sequences. The character should not be confused with Sam Loomis, Marion Crane’s lover, or Milton Arbogast, the private investigator who searches for her.