Los Angeles: Tim Curry, a character actor who created a gallery of delicious, very loony villains for stage and screen, including Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the smug concierge in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”, has died. He was 80.
Curry, who suffered a stroke in 2012 that put him in a wheelchair, died Tuesday night at his home in Los Angeles, according to his longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz. No cause was disclosed.
Known for his arch humour, a puttylike face and gift with voices, Curry earned three Tony nominations — for “Spamalot”, “My Favorite Year” and “Amadeus” — and a Primetime Emmy nod in 1994.
“I like playing the more curious corners of the human mind and human behavior, partly because they're a tad more interesting,” Curry told The Associated Press in 1993.
Curry burst onto the scene as the Transylvanian Frank-N-Furter in the sci-fi, cross-dressing rock musical “The Rocky Horror Show”, which premiered in 1973 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went with it to Broadway and then starred in the 1975 cult-classic movie alongside Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf and Susan Sarandon.
The show was ahead of its time in terms of its representation of LGBTQ+ characters and has entered the pop culture lexicon for its many iconic and memorable scenes, including the song “The Time Warp”, which has been covered by handfuls of artists, and the often-quoted phrase, “Dammit, Janet!” The show was twice revived on Broadway, most recently in 2026 with Luke Evans playing Frank-N-Furter.
“He was a force, a bright fierce flame, an exquisite charm and that rich vocal tone,” Evans wrote on Instagram. “I hope, wherever you are, you'd approve of one more Frank having the time of his life in those heels.” Curry's Frank-N-Furter had a posh British accent, but that almost wasn't the case. He said he tried German and American accents but pivoted after he heard a British woman on a bus talking with her friend.
“I met a woman on a bus who said, 'Do you have a house in town or a house in the country' and I thought, 'That's the voice!'” he told LA Magazine in 2015.
For many years after the film's premiere, the British-born actor declined to discuss it. He didn't participate in activities promoting the film, which morphed into an interactive event at midnight shows.
But he later warmed again to the project and embraced it at public events. Asked by LA Magazine how he viewed “Rocky Horror”, he responded: “With a sort of bemused tolerance. It's neither a blessing nor a curse. I was lucky to get it.” Curry's Broadway career included starring in Tom Stoppard's “Travesties” in 1975-76, playing Mozart opposite Ian McKellen's Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer's “Amadeus” and King Arthur in the 2005 production of “Spamalot”.
The New York Times said his “stalwart, plummy-voiced Arthur wears a smile as inflexible as armour.” He also played Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”, at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in 2001.
His screen credits included starring as the child-killing monster in the 1990 miniseries version of Stephen King's horror novel “It”, as a medical officer in “The Hunt for Red October” in 1990 and the double-dealing Cardinal Richelieu in 1993's “The Three Musketeers” with Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Chris O'Donnell.
“Tim Curry was someone I cared deeply about, he was someone I loved working with and I am so lucky to have these memories,” Sutherland said in a statement.
In his 2025 memoir, “Vagabond”, Curry warned readers that while there were scraps of his nature in his characters, he was none of them.
“The distinctions between who I really am and who I've pretended to be as an actor have proven to be a source of great disappointment to some audiences. It has not caused me much personal distress beyond the periodic necessity to deter stalkers,” he wrote.
Born in Cheshire, England, Curry was the son of a Navy chaplain and a school secretary. He was 12 when his father died and his mother subsequently went to work. Young Tim learned to cook his own breakfast, resulting in a lifelong passion for cooking, and sharpened his humour muscles.
“My father was a Methodist chaplain in the Navy, and we moved pretty much every 18 months,” he said. “So I had to make my mark in new schools and new playgrounds pretty quickly. And a sense of humour is the best way to do that. I was always a kind of mimic, one of those awful, relentless children, I should think.” Acting did not occur to him until his middle teens, when he attended a school for the sons of Methodist ministers.
“I was lucky that it was a liberal kind of school; many of them in England are rather Dickensian,” he recalled to the AP. “There was a lot of theatre, and I sang, too; I had been singing in church from the age of 7. I had enormous opportunities to express myself in that way. I just got hooked, really.” His training continued in 1965 when he entered the University of Birmingham, at that time one of three English universities with a drama department. “I took an academic course, which I largely ignored, I'm afraid, and just acted all the time,” he said.
He then went down to London and talked his way into his first job, “Hair”, in the West End. Curry went on to the more formalized theatre of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre, where he was enlisted for “The Rocky Horror Show.”
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