What Tim Curry Said About His Health & Stroke Before His Death

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More than a decade after Tim Curry suffered a stroke, the Rocky Horror Picture Show star—who died Aug. 26 at age 80—detailed the effects of the medical emergency.

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Tim Curry pulled the curtain back on his health.

Nearly one year before the Rocky Horror Picture Show star died at age 80—which his rep confirmed Aug. 26—he shared insight into the lasting physical effects of his 2012 stroke.

"I still can't walk, which is why I'm in this silly chair," Curry told the audience in September 2025 at a special screening for the musical's 50th anniversary. "That's very limiting. I won't be singing and I won't be dancing very soon. I still have real problems with my left leg."

Beyond using a wheelchair, the It actor—who had surgery in July 2012 after doctors found two blood clots in his brain—detailed the lasting pain after the right-brain stroke, which affects control of the body's left side.

"Any kind of touch on my left arm and left hand can be very painful," he shared on CBS Sunday Morning a month later. "I'm not paralyzed anymore, thank God, although I can't really use my left arm or often my left leg."

Curry, who noted that his face "went sideways" after the stroke, also had to relearn basic tasks, like talking.

"I was in hospital for a while, I think about a month," he recalled. "I had a certain amount of rehabilitation. I had to learn how to speak again. That was very weird."

"I hated not being able to speak because I speak a lot," Curry admitted. "I have to be told to shut up a lot. I love words. I love to communicate."

The Emmy Award winner went to the hospital after his at-home massage therapist had noticed stroke symptoms during their appointment.

"I felt fine," he emphasized. "I had no symptoms that I was aware of, but clearly he had noticed some. He called 911. An ambulance came, and they carried me down the stairs of my house on a stretcher."

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He also noted that the emergency medical service workers didn't know that he was having a stroke. Curry, who was diagnosed at the hospital, thought back to himself, then age 11, seeing his dad James Curry having a stroke.

"I knew that a lot of people didn't survive a stroke and that he was an exception," he recalled. "So, I was scared."

But more than a decade after his medical crisis, Curry no longer feared dying.

"I try to avoid it as I think we all do, but I suspect that in the end I will welcome it," he reflected. "I think it may be very comforting to go bye-bye and I want to earn it. I want to earn the privilege of not being here. I'm not galloping towards it."

Curry posited, "I may well embrace it."

Keep reading for a look back at Curry's life and legendary career.

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1970

Evening Standard/Getty Images

1975

Rocky Horror Picture Show

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1975

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1981

Saturday Night Live