Tim Curry, Outlandish Star of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Dies at 80

Tim Curry, the offbeat British actor who specialized in playing eccentrics like the seductive, cross-dressing scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and such fiendish villains as Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King’s It, died Wednesday. He was 80.

Curry died at his Toluca Lake home in Los Angeles, his longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz announced. He had suffered a major stroke in 2012.

Curry joined Rocky Horror in the original stage production at a tiny upstairs venue at London’s Royal Court Theatre, stuck with the sexual farce as it moved to larger London venues and Broadway and then starred with a young Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick in the 1975 Fox movie adaptation. 

At the movies, audience members would dress up as their favorite characters, bring props and throw items around the theater as they sang along to favorites like “Time Warp,” “Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch Me” and, performed by Curry, the sensationally bawdy “Sweet Transvestite.”

“It’s a chance for people to try on a few roles for size, maybe help them figure out their own sexuality,” Curry said of the film in a 2005 interview with NPR. “I’ve certainly had some very interesting and moving mail from people who’ve said, ‘Thanks for helping me figure out who I was,’ and that’s very nice.”

Curry went on to a successful, varied career, immediately seeking a departure from the zany role with which he’d become identified. He hit the mainstream consciousness in Annie (1982), playing antagonist Rooster Hannigan, who schemed with his sister, orphanage matron Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett), to kidnap Annie (Aileen Quinn).

His villainy went to a darker place in 1990 when he appeared as the twisted Pennywise in a two-part ABC adaptation of It, with more than 37 million households tuning in. He turned the traditional clown on its head and employed a low, raspy voice and New York accent. 

“My job was to give Tim the stage and not get in his way too much,” director Tommy Lee Wallace told THR in 2017. “He was like Robin Williams in the way he brought a spontaneous improvisation to the part.” 

Curry was nominated for three best actor Tonys. The first was for originating the role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1981’s Amadeus, though he lost out to co-star Ian McKellen as the composer’s rival, Antonio Salieri. In 1993, he was nominated again, this time for portraying alcoholic actor Alan Swann in the musical My Favorite Year. 

His third nom came in 2005 for playing King Arthur in the hugely popular goofball musical Monty Python’s Spamalot, based the 1975 movie Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Curry joined the cast when the show bowed in Chicago in 2004, and his three-year stint also included a stop in London.

On adapting a film that was so popular, Curry said, “It’s quite interesting because the audience always contains some core of Monty Python fans, who see stuff coming and react with great whoops of joy and then settle down to see it unfold. They are hugely welcoming, and they really want to see it happen. Happily, they’re not talking along with it, because that would need a spanking.”

After years away, he appeared in the horror film Stream, which hit theaters in August 2024.

Timothy James Curry was born on April 19, 1946, in Cheshire, England. His father, a Methodist Royal Navy chaplain, died when Tim was 12. Curry began his professional acting career in a 1968 West End production of Hair shortly after graduating from the U.K.’s University of Birmingham. 

It was during this production that he met actor Richard O’Brien, who wrote The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Curry helped the playwright develop his mad scientist, originally envisioned as a lab coat-wearing German. With Curry’s help, the character eventually dons a corset and fishnet stockings and speaks “like the queen.” 

The campy plot revolves around a “square” couple, Brad and Janet (Bostwick and Sarandon in the film), who are stranded in the rain when their car breaks down. Curry’s heavily made-up, outrageous scientist from the town of Transsexual, Transylvania shows them around his maze-like home and lab where he is building, Frankenstein-style, a buff man named Rocky (Peter Hinwood).

Made for just $1.2 million, the musical underwhelmed during its original run, but it would became a cult classic known for its raucous late-night screenings. It played in theaters for years — in fact, it’s got to be still playing somewhere — and brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in its various incarnations.

At some point, Princess Diana requested to meet Curry. As he later recounted, he met her in a receiving line, where she asked, “You were in The Rocky Horror Show, weren’t you?” and he said, “Yes, I was, but I’m sure that you haven’t seen it.” She replied with a laugh, “Oh, yes, it quite completed my education.” Curry later told NPR of the encounter, “She was a very funny girl and a very beautiful one, and a very wicked smile came with that sentence.” 

Curry moved to Los Angeles in hopes of advancing his movie career. He eventually became known for buying and renovating homes in the city and also for his love of gardening that was inspired by his father. Yet while his fame continued to grow, he remained relatively private, rarely discussing personal details in interviews.

In Clue (1985), based on the board game, he turned in a physical comic performance as Wadsworth, the butler who investigates the murder of Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving) alongside the likes of fellow suspects Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn) and Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd). 

Curry took a subtler turn in the Cold War action-drama The Hunt for Red October (1990) as Dr. Petrov, a loyal Soviet physician onboard the submarine helmed by Sean Connery‘s Captain Ramius.

He again showed his comedic range in the family-friendly Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) as the nosy concierge who works at the hotel where young Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) is staying as he tries to avoid bad guys Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern).

In The Three Musketeers (1993), Curry played a repugnant villain fans loved to hate — Cardinal Richelieu, whose plot against the French king is opposed by Aramis (Charlie Sheen), Athos (Kiefer Sutherland), Porthos (Oliver Platt) and D’Artagnan (Chris O’Donnell). Likewise, he was an antagonist in the 2000 film reboot of Charlie’s Angels.

Other memorable film roles included a swashbuckling Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island (1996); archvillain Major Vladakov in the comedy McHale’s Navy (1997); and Herkermer Homolka, a philanthropist who’s in over his head in the jungle, in Michael Crichton’s Congo (1995).

On television, Curry starred as the Bard in the 1978 British miniseries Will Shakespeare and was nominated for an Emmy in 1994 for playing an entire murderous family (mother/father/sister/daughter) in the Tales From the Crypt episode “Death of Some Salesmen.” 

He also starred as the butler Mr. French on a short-lived 2002 reboot of the 1960s sitcom Family Affair.

“Eric Idle [of Monty Python] and I always have this greeting when we see each other: We shake hands and say, ‘Butlers and villains,'” Curry once said on The View. “I think it happens to a lot of European actors [when they come to the U.S.], particularly if you’ve never established yourself as a romantic leading man. The fact is, though, the bad guys are always much better written than the good guys, and they’re kind of irresistible to play.”

He was a talented voice actor, winning a Daytime Emmy in 1990 for playing Captain Hook on Fox’s Peter Pan and the Pirates. He also voiced the evil and destructive spirit Hexxus in FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and Nigel Thornberry, Eliza’s dad, on Nickelodeon’s The Wild Thornberries.

Curry’s larger-than-life characters often stole the show on TV, in particular on Monk, where in one episode he played detective Adrian Monk’s (Tony Shalhoub) morbidly obese archenemy Dale “the Whale” Biederbeck in 2004 (the part was played at different times by Adam Arkin and Ray Porter). 

On Psych, he guest-starred as Nigel St. Nigel, a Simon Cowell-esque reality show judge who thinks his life is in danger. 

On the opposite end of the comedy-drama spectrum, he gave an emotional performance in a 2010 two-episode arc on CBS’ Criminal Minds as a tormented serial killer and rapist driven by childhood traumas.

Curry also had a turn as a recording artist, releasing three rock albums in the late 1970s and early ’80s and even going on tour. But it was for his voice work that he was nominated for a Grammy in 2006, for best spoken word album for children, with the audiobook of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning alongside Meryl Streep, Jim Carrey, Jude Law and producer David S. Rapkin.

In 2012, Curry suffered a stroke that required him to use a wheelchair, though he kept his condition private for nearly a year before it was widely reported. He continued to do voice work, including on the TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars as Chancellor Palpatine and Darth Sidious (replacing Ian Abercrombie, who died in 2012). 

He served as narrator (aka The Criminologist) on Fox TV’s 2016 adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, with Laverne Cox taking over as Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

“[Curry] would come to rehearsals when he himself wasn’t rehearsing and just sit in the middle of the room and tell us industry stories and make us laugh,” castmember Ryan McCartan told THR at the time. “Having him there as a godfather of the whole thing was such validation for us to advance confidently. His presence made a huge difference.” 

Curry never married and had no children.

The actor talked about his stroke, which occurred while he was having a massage, in October during an interview for CBS Sunday Morning. “I had to learn how to speak again,” he said. “That was very weird. I hated not being able to speak because I speak a lot. I have to be told to shut up a lot. I love words, I love to communicate.”

Asked if he was afraid of dying, he responded: “No, I’m not. I don’t fear death. I try to avoid it, as I think we all do, but I suspect that in the end I will welcome it.”