Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins and Photographer Berry Berenson. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, and New York City with his older brother, actor and Director Oz Perkins. Perkins is a great-grandson of the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who was a great-niece of Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian Astronomer who believed he had discovered the supposed canals of Mars, and a nephew of the Actress Marisa Berenson, Berry's sister. His paternal grandfather Osgood Perkins, was also an actor. His maternal great-grandfather was Count Wilhelm de Wendt de Kerlor, a theosophist and psychic medium. His mother was a great-grandniece of art expert Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), whose sister Senda (1868–1954) was an athlete and educator and one of the first two women elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Perkins attended Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, after graduating from high school at the Harvard-Westlake School in 1994.