Early Life
Perkins was born in Queens, New York City, the daughter of Jo Williams, a drug treatment counselor and concert pianist, and James Perkins, a farmer, writer, and businessman. Her paternal grandparents were Greek immigrants from Salonika who anglicized their surname from "Pisperikos" to "Perkins" when they emigrated to the United States. Perkins was raised in Colrain, Massachusetts; her parents divorced in 1963. She began working in theatre with Arena Civic Theatre, a non-profit community theatre group based out of Greenfield, Massachusetts. Perkins attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school, and then spent three years in Chicago studying acting at the Goodman School of Drama. In 1984, she made her theatrical debut on Broadway in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and afterward, worked in a number of ensemble companies, including The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Steppenwolf Theater.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Perkins
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)