Tim Curry was a supernova — and the ultimate cult actor…
If “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was the ultimate cult film, Tim Curry was the ultimate cult actor.
To be his fan was to be his follower. Curry was, merely put, an addictive presence to behold.
The gregarious Brit, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 80, oozed an eccentric, ginormous persona that exploded off the display and stage and impressed a passionate fandom spanning a number of generations.
Close your eyes and you’ll be able to hear his chesty, devilish giggle. You can image his mischievous grin. That black corset and the fishnets are perpetually seared onto your retinas. Curry was not in the enterprise of being forgettable.
Part glam rocker, half butler, half Mephistopheles, spicy Curry fused that aura onto every position he performed — from a candy transvestite from Transylvania to a demonic clown terrorizing a city in Maine.
If you solid Tim Curry in a film, it’s because you needed pure Tim Curry.
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Actor Tim Curry died in LA at age 80. REUTERS
Everybody has their favourite. Younger viewers will know him as the suspicious Plaza lodge concierge in “Home Alone 2.” And millennials have a gentle spot for his performance as Wadsworth “Clue.” I’m a fan of his hilarious Broadway flip as King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
But his most well-known position was, after all, his breakout flip as the lascivious Dr. Frank ‘N Furter in 1975’s “Rocky Horror,” a half he originated onstage in London two years prior.
Born in 1946 in Cheshire, England, Curry was a no person when he tried out for director Jim Sharman’s musical at the Royal Court Theatre. He’d been in the British solid of “Hair.” Yet at 27 years previous he already had a rock star’s confidence.
“Tim auditioned singing Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti,’ ” Sharman told The Post in 2020. “He ripped the Royal Court roof off. He had it, then and there . . . and, beneath the makeup, Tim was that rare thing, a thinking actor with an adventurous streak, and [had] the technical chops to really deliver. He simply got it.”
Curry’s breakout position was as Dr. Frank ‘N Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Adventurous is correct. Curry told The Post in 1981 that he gravitated in direction of the type of roles “where you may fall on your face if you don’t pull it off.”
“Rocky Horror” went down a deal with with UK ticketbuyers, and he took his Frank to LA and Broadway.
Then Curry reprised it in the basic film, reverse Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf. It was almost a big flop. “Rocky Horror” only turned common after rowdy audiences began shouting again at the display during midnight exhibiting at the Waverly in Greenwich Village — a custom that continues today at the Village East.
But I’m satisfied that cherished ritual and lore wouldn’t exist have been it not for its lead actor. To my thoughts, it was Curry’s gung-ho, shame-free performance that gave viewers members permission to “give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” He was puppeteering them just as a lot as Frank was manipulating harmless Brad and Janet.
Curry is just as liable for “Rocky Horror”‘s success as the midnight screenings are. ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
In the same approach that film had a slow start, Curry’s movie profession didn’t take off immediately both. First he got here again to Broadway. The actor starred in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” in 1975 and he performed wacky Mozart in “Amadeus” reverse Ian McKellen in 1980.
And then got here Hollywood. He was Rooster in 1982’s “Annie,” however he loathed working with baby actors.
“One rather dreads them,” Curry told The Post.
He put his cash the place his mouth is. Curry never married and had no youngsters.
The actor was chilling as Pennywise the clown in “It.” Disney General Entertainment Content through Getty Images
Yet he nonetheless turned a fixture of household leisure. A person who made his title playing a promiscuous troublemaker was immediately embodying erudite authority figures in children flicks like the Plaza clerk in “Home Alone 2” and the butler in “Clue.” What was enjoyable, though, was there was always a naughty twinkle in his eye. Everybody — the adults anyway — was in on the joke.
In 1990, Curry donned a crimson wig and slopped on the white make-up for what’s gotta be his second-most memorable flip: as Pennywise the clown in the TV version of Stephen King’s “It.” The villain, the strolling manifestation of worry, performed up Curry’s signature high quality — his ability to be each attractive and harmful. A human Venus flytrap.
Curry continued working after that, totally on TV sequence and as a prolific voice actor. His sonorous brogue was intoxicating, to say the least. And he got here again to Broadway in grand vogue in 2005’s hit musical “Spamalot.” But a debilitating stroke in 2012 saved him largely away from the display.
Curry performed King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot” on Broadway. Getty Images
“I still can’t walk, which is why I’m in this silly chair,” he said in 2025. “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.”
That was arduous for we of the cult of Curry to just accept: that a performer still so vivacious, expressive and singular was pressured into an early retirement by a merciless health scare.
But his work lives on. College children are still dressing up like Dr. Frank, Riff Raff and Magenta at late-night campus screenings. “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” is a permanent Christmas basic.
And as for the indomitable Curry, he’s going house.
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