Tim Curry, iconic character actor and ‘Rocky Horror Image Present’ star, dies at 80 – Boston Information, Climate, Sports activities

Tim Curry, a personality actor who created a gallery of scrumptious, very loony villains for stage and display, together with Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Image Present” and the smug concierge in “Dwelling Alone 2: Misplaced in New York,” has died. He was 80.

Curry, who suffered a stroke in 2012 that put him in a wheelchair, died Wednesday at his residence in Los Angeles, based on his longtime supervisor and pal Marcia Hurwitz. No trigger was disclosed.

Recognized for his arch humor, a putty-like face and present with voices, Curry earned three Tony nominations — for “Spamalot,” “My Favourite Yr” and “Amadeus” — and an Emmy nod in 1994.

“I like taking part in the extra curious corners of the human thoughts and human conduct, partly as a result of they’re a tad extra attention-grabbing,” Curry informed The Related Press in 1993.

Curry burst onto the scene because the Transylvanian Frank-N-Furter within the sci-fi, cross-dressing rock musical “The Rocky Horror Image Present,” which premiered in 1973 on the Royal Courtroom Theatre in London. He went with it to Broadway after which starred within the 1975 cult-classic film alongside Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf and Susan Sarandon.

The present was forward of its time when it comes to its illustration of LGBTQ+ characters and has entered the popular culture lexicon for its many iconic and memorable scenes, together with the music “The Time Warp,” which has been coated by handfuls of artists, and the often-quoted phrase, “Dammit, Janet!” The present was twice revived on Broadway, most not too long ago in 2026 with Luke Evans taking part in Frank-N-Furter.

Tim Curry’s tackle Frank-N-Furter

Curry’s Frank-N-Furter had a complicated British accent, however that nearly wasn’t the case. He mentioned he tried German and American accents however pivoted after he heard a British lady on a bus speaking along with her pal.

“I met a lady on a bus who mentioned, ‘Do you might have a home on the town or a home within the nation’ and I assumed, ‘That’s the voice!’” he informed LA Journal in 2015.

For a few years after the movie’s premiere, the British-born actor declined to debate it. He didn’t take part in actions selling the movie, which morphed into an interactive occasion at midnight exhibits. However he later warmed once more to the mission and embraced it at public occasions. Requested by LA Journal how he seen “Rocky Horror,” he responded: “With a form of bemused tolerance. It’s neither a blessing nor a curse. I used to be fortunate to get it.”

Curry’s Broadway profession included starring in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” in 1975-76, taking part in Mozart reverse Ian McKellen’s Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” and King Arthur within the 2005 manufacturing of “Spamalot.” The New York Occasions mentioned his “stalwart, plummy-voiced Arthur wears a smile as rigid as armor.”

His display credit included starring because the child-killing monster within the 1990 miniseries model of Stephen King’s horror novel “It” and the double-dealing Cardinal Richelieu in 1993’s “The Three Musketeers” with Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Chris O’Donnell.

In his 2025 memoir, “Vagabond,” Curry warned readers that whereas there have been scraps of his nature in his characters, he was none of them. “The distinctions between who I actually am and who I’ve pretended to be as an actor have confirmed to be a supply of nice disappointment to some audiences. It has not induced me a lot private misery past the periodic necessity to discourage stalkers,” he wrote.

Tim Curry’s life and profession started in England

Born in Cheshire, England, Curry was the son of a Navy chaplain and a faculty secretary. He was 12 when his father died and his mom subsequently went to work. Younger Tim realized to cook dinner his personal breakfast, leading to a lifelong ardour for cooking, and sharpened his humor muscle tissue.

“My father was a Methodist chaplain within the Navy, and we moved just about each 18 months,” he mentioned. “So I needed to make my mark in new colleges and new playgrounds fairly rapidly. And a humorousness is one of the simplest ways to try this. I used to be all the time a type of mimic, a kind of terrible, relentless kids, I ought to suppose.”

Appearing didn’t happen to him till his center teenagers, when he attended a faculty for the sons of Methodist ministers.

“I used to be fortunate that it was a liberal type of college; a lot of them in England are moderately Dickensian,” he recalled to the AP. “There was plenty of theater, and I sang, too; I had been singing in church from the age of seven. I had monumental alternatives to precise myself in that means. I simply received hooked, actually.”

His coaching continued in 1965 when he entered the College of Birmingham, at the moment certainly one of three English universities with a drama division. “I took an instructional course, which I largely ignored, I’m afraid, and simply acted on a regular basis,” he mentioned.

He then went all the way down to London and talked his means into his first job, “Hair,” within the West Finish. Curry went on to the extra formalized theater of the Royal Shakespeare Firm and the Royal Courtroom Theatre, the place he was enlisted for “The Rocky Horror Image Present.”

Tim Curry’s different roles

He went on to futilely attempt to cease Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister from making the most of New York’s swanky Plaza Resort in “Dwelling Alone 2: Misplaced in New York.” Curry additionally was Wadsworth, the unhinged butler with a secret previous, within the additionally quotable “Clue.” He performed a rich philanthropist in 1995’s “Congo” and reverse Carol Burnett within the film “Annie.”

“Hollywood tends to make use of European actors, particularly English ones, as villains as a result of they like heroes to be Individuals. I feel we include a specific amount of fashion, which is difficult for American actors to accumulate,” he informed the AP in 1997. “They’ve to decide on early on between New York and the theater vs. Hollywood and tv and flicks. In England there’s nonetheless regional theater, the place you may be assured work for a number of years doing all types of issues.”

In later years, Curry lent his baritone voice to many voice-acting roles in kids’s TV sequence, together with “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “The Wild Thornberrys” and “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.”

After a yearslong break from live-action roles, he performed a plague doctor-masked man in a wheelchair in 2024’s “Stream,” one thing the movie’s director Michael Leavy known as a dream come true.

Curry, who by no means married and had no kids, was deeply personal about his private life. However he wrote in his memoir that he was satisfied to inform his story because of so many transferring encounters with followers.

“The notion that my experiences would possibly resonate helps me persevere — in the event that they ring a bell with just one teenager, alone with a e book in his room, as I so typically was; or that younger lady studying this on an interminably lengthy bus trip; or that older queen, hopefully nonetheless in his fishnets, who noticed ‘Rocky Horror’ upstairs on the Royal Courtroom; or that middle-aged mom who organizes ‘Clue’ watching events and refuses entry to anyone out of costume; or that buttoned-up financial institution clerk who relishes musicals; or that lady who kicked me out of the Waverly for being myself,” he wrote.