Both versatile and flamboyant actor Tim Curry had two roles that he really made his own – Dr Frank-N-Furter in ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and Pennywise in the TV series of Stephen King’s ‘It’.
Childhood…
Timothy James Curry was born on 19th April 1946 in Cheshire to a military family (his father was a Methodist Royal Navy chaplain) that saw him move around the UK before finally settling down in Plymouth when he was 11 years old and at the same time his father, only 49 at the time, had a stroke and passed away having contracted pneumonia. It left him living with his sister and mum, who he suspected might have been bipolar with her behaviour, after his father’s death and her becoming more volatile.
Tim Curry starts as an actor
He went to boarding school after which he travelled around Europe returning to the UK to study English & Drama at Birmingham University after which he moved to London to become an actor and landing a role in ‘Hair’ in 1968. During this time he bumped into Richard O’Brien who had written a somewhat avant garde first play called The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Curry auditioned in the most flamboyant boisterous way with a rendition of Tutti Frutti that saw him land the role of the sexually ambiguous role of Dr Frank N Furter. He put together his own costume for the role – killer heels from a women’s shoe shop, a corset from a play he had appeared in and an accent that he’d overheard on a bus. The play opened at the the Royal Court theatre and was a huge hit with everyone except his mother who was unimpressed, even embarrassed. The show grew in success with audiences cosplaying the characters and in 1975 a film was made that starred Susan Sarandon and a pre-Bat out of Hell Meatloaf and became hugely successful and remains, theatrically, the longest running film in cinemas to this day. By now Tim Curry was living in Los Angeles where he bought his first house where a stalker on parole lurked around the property but was soon arrested. Soon after wards he moved to New York and things started to spiral when he began to take cocaine as part and parcel of his new lifestyle in a brief tenure as a rock star releasing three albums and ended when his contract was up. Unusually for those who imbibe he gave up cocaine but instead replaced it with alcohol eventually attending rehab.
Into the 1980’s he began taking roles as villains of which by far the most striking was in Ridely Scott’s’ 1985 film, ‘Legend’ where he played ‘Darkness’ in the most extraordinary of make ups that saw him encased in a scarlet skin and with a huge sets of horns. Designed by make-up maestro Rob Bottin his designs were breath taking hardly surprising when his previous had included the equally extraordinary effects for John Carpenters’ remake of The Thing so it was little surprise that the films only Oscar nomination was for its make-up. Curry would round off the decade in another demonic role in the TV series of Stephen Kings ‘It’ as the killer clown Pennywise that traumatized audiences. But like Frank-n-furter and Darkness he was unrecognisable but his performance shone through and it became an iconic role for him.
The 1990’s saw Tim Curry move on to lighter and comedic films starting with Home Alone 2, the parody Loaded Weapon, a load of voiceovers for animated TV series and best of all Muppet Treasure Island that saw him ad lib an hilarious line about an affair with Miss Piggy about, ‘once you’ve had pork you never go back’ that was inevitably cut from the film.
The end of the decade saw his mother pass away with whom he had reconciled and visited whenever he was in the UK. But what hit him hardest was the death of his beloved sister in 2001. She was only 60 and had died from a brain tumour.
Illness….
In 2012 Curry suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak for some weeks and with short term memory loss. Around the same time it was found that he had an aneurysm in his abdomen that would eventually confine him to a wheelchair and necessitated a team of carers as he became unable to use his left arm. All this took its toll on his career and he took the occasional role where he could with his last film being 2024’s ‘Stream’ by which time he had started to regularly attend fan conventions. 2025 saw him release his autobiography, ‘Vagabond’ that reflected his early life as a childhood moving around as well as his life as an actor. He never married or had any children.
On 25th August 2025 Tim Curry passed away in his Los Angeles home at the age of 80 the same age as his mother when she had passed away.
related feature : Pennywise at the IT Chapter 2 premiere / James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain & Bill Skarsgard
related feature : The story behind the shot – ‘The Thing’
