Tim Curry, the iconic actor known for his roles in ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘It’, has died
The English actor was 80 years old. He had been ill since 2012
Tim Curry, the British actor who starred in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), one of the musicals of all time, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 80. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed, but according to Variety, Curry had suffered from various health problems in the past following a stroke in 2012.
A highly versatile singer, actor and voice actor, Tim Curry won a Daytime Emmy Award and received nominations for the Tony Awards and the Olivier Awards for several other roles, but his career remained inextricably linked to the diabolical Dr Frank-N-Furter, the ‘sweet transvestite/ From Transsexual, Transylvania’ (the ‘sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania’) in the boundary-pushing musical by composer and playwright Richard O’Brien.
Curry was the first to play the character on the London stage, directed by Jim Sharman, before taking it to theatres in Los Angeles and New York and finally to the big screen, directed by Sharman himself in 1975: initially, it was a box-office flop, but the film subsequently enjoyed a second lease of life, becoming a cult classic on the midnight cinema circuit.
Just as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, whose portrayals of Frankenstein and Dracula in the 1930s defined the cinematic image of the two characters for ever, Curry too became indelibly associated with his portrayal of the scandalous mad scientist in a nightdress. He himself was aware of this: ‘I’d hesitated to accept the role because, if it worked, it would create an image for me that would be difficult to shake off,’ he said in a 1975 interview in London. Curry was, in fact, far more than just Dr Frank-N-Furter: he had started out in theatre in 1968 with the London company of Hair, then, until the mid-1970s, he had performed in plays by Shakespeare, Brecht, Büchner and Stoppard at the Royal Court Theatre and the Citizens Theatre before The Rocky Horror Show established him as a star.
In 1981, his portrayal of Mozart in the New York production of Amadeus earned him a Tony nomination, whilst his role as the Pirate King in the 1982 production of The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan at Theatre Royal Drury Lane earned him a Laurence Olivier nomination. Curry subsequently returned to the Broadway stage as Alan Swann, a boastful actor and heavy drinker, in the musical adaptation of My Favorite Year. He then played King Arthur in the New York and London productions of Monty Python’s Spamalot, a musical adaptation — directed by Mike Nichols — of the parody of the Arthurian cycle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Although he occasionally took on dramatic roles in films such as The Hunt for Red October (1990) and The Three Musketeers (1993), comedy proved to be his most natural medium. Other notable roles include Mr Hector, the concierge at the Plaza, in Mum, I’ve Missed the Plane: I’ve Got Lost in New York (1992) and the villain Jigsaw in Loaded Weapon (Loaded Weapon 1, 1993). Just as villainous as Pennywise, the iconic killer clown born of the imagination of Stephen King in It, to whom Curry lent his (heavily made-up) face in 1990 for the ABC television miniseries.
