It’s hard to imagine a more impactful presence in the millennial mind, particularly the outsider, queer, or cinephile, than that of Tim Curry, the veteran actor of stage and screen who passed this Wednesday at the age of 80. Tony Award nominee, voice actor extraordinaire, honorary Muppet—all of these descriptors fit Curry’s decades of work, a body of acting best characterized by his resonant purr of a voice, deep, piercing eyes, and a flamboyance from which it was impossible to look away.
Curry was born in 1946 in Cheshire, the son of a school secretary and a Royal Navy Captain; the latter’s revolving door of assignments sent him everywhere from Hong Kong to a variety of British seaside towns before they settled down in Plymouth. It was mere weeks after that that Curry’s father suffered a stroke and later died from pneumonia complications in 1958. Curry was 11.
He literally burst onto the scene in fishnets, high heels, and thickly-lacquered lipstick as the libidinous mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a role he originated on the London stage. (He met the show’s playwright, and his co-star as Riff Raff, Richard O’Brien, when they did Hair in London.) A “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania,” Curry’s Frank proudly flaunted all pretenses of good taste, and in the case of poor Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, the pearl-clutching norms of heteronormativity.
Roger Ebert said of Curry’s performance, “He’s the best thing in the movie, maybe because he seems to be having the most fun.” He vamped, strutted, and sneered his way through that picture, urging his fellow freaks and queerdos to “don’t dream it, be it.” Like Terence Stamp in “Teorema,” he seduced virtually every other character in the picture, and it was as liberating as it was chaotic. And Curry, with every high kick and bugged-out eye, embodied the queer freedom that a generation of young queer folks would cling to. (I had the CD of the film’s soundtrack in my car as a teen; little did I realize why those notes would stick with me so much.)
It was the kind of role that could ruin or pigeonhole a young actor like Curry and, well, despite a modest reception upon release, “Rocky Horror” would quickly become a midnight movie favorite, one that’s still screened in movie theaters to enthusiastic crowds (and audience participation) to this day. From there, he’d bounce into Hollywood with a variety of snarling villain roles perfectly suited to his particular brand of bombast: Rooster in 1982’s “Annie” (that mustache), the Satan-like Darkness in Ridley Scott’s gauzy 1985 fantasy “Legend” (those horns), a duplicitous preacher in 1988’s underseen “Pass the Ammo.”
On “Legend,” Roger Ebert would say of Curry that he “makes an effective Darkness; I liked his style. But, once again, the makeup people have done such a good job with his blazing eyes and gigantic horns that, in a way, almost any actor could be lurking inside there (only Curry’s sensuous lips give him away).”
But his next iconic role would be as the breathlessly expositing butler Wadsworth in 1985’s “Clue,” in which he chewed through scenery as if it were a steaming bowl of shark’s fin soup. “Clue” is murder mystery farce at its finest, and alongside his talented co-stars (including Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd) he met every gag, line, and frenzied dash from room to room with the same brio and clipped upper-crust accent we’d come to expect. Even when he went small, it felt big; when he arched his eyebrow, the ceiling always rose a couple inches.
Same goes for Pennywise in 1990’s “IT,” playing the demonic clown from Stephen King’s imagination with equal playfulness and menace. His villainy was always a bit impish, no matter the role; sure, he was a baddie, but he loved it, and that’s what made him so magnetic to watch. It’s what made him so cuddly even when he transgressed in such unscrupulous ways—it’s funny, considering the gender-bending hedonism of his breakout role, that he’d find himself snarling giddily through so many family films, from “Home Alone 2” to Long John Silver in “Muppet Treasure Island.” (As the cape-wearing Grand Wizard in the 1986 TV movie “The Worst Witch,” he threatened us with such Halloween horrors as a dog turning into a cat.) With every oily, smarmy retort, Curry let his characters relish in the delight of villainy, and we enjoyed every second of it.
In addition to his live-action roles, his reedy, musical voice made him perfect for voice acting. Here, too, he chiefly played villains in everything from “FernGully” to the Power Rangers knockoff “Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad”—no role was beneath him. (He did, of course, play the occasional virtuous character, as his long run as patriarch Nigel on Nickelodeon’s “The Wild Thornberries proves.) He’d even dabble in computer games, most famously as the Russian Premier Cherdenko in “Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3” (dusting off his Russian accent from the John McTiernan Cold War thriller “The Hunt for Red October”). In perhaps the hammiest line Curry would ever deliver, he asserted that he would flee to “the one place not corrupted by capitalism…. SPACE!”
But his first love was always the stage, and he’d return to it several times throughout his career. His first Tony nomination was as Mozart beside Ian McKellan’s Salieri in a production of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus”; in 1992, he earned another for “My Favorite Year” on Broadway. He originated the role of King Arthur in “Spamalot,” which snagged him his third nom in 2005.
Curry would work steadily in film, TV, theater, and a variety of other mediums until 2012, after a sudden stroke during a massage gave him mobility issues on his left side. He would use a wheelchair until his passing. Even so, Curry greeted his new condition with his signature humor, and went on to refer to his disabled left hand as “Teddy.” He still did the occasional voice work, including taking a stint as Emperor Palpatine in “The Clone Wars.” But his 2025 memoir “Vagabond” sums up Curry’s life as only he can tell it: ribald, witty, deliciously dry, and filled with absolute pleasure.
In a late-in-life interview with Ben Mankiewicz for CBS Sunday Morning, Curry said of his impending passing, “I don’t fear death. I try to avoid it [laughs] as I think we all do. But I suspect that in the end, I will welcome it… I think it may be comforting to go bye-bye, and I want to earn the privilege of not being here. I’m not galloping towards it, but I think I may well embrace it.” Wherever he may be, I hope he sees blue skies through the tears in his eyes.
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