Tim Curry’s career would take him from the stage to Hollywood, from a Transylvanian castle to the sewers beneath Derry and even to New York’s Plaza Hotel – but it all began in Warrington.
The actor, whose extraordinary six-decade career produced some of film, television and theatre’s most memorable characters, has died at his Los Angeles home aged 80.
Curry was born in Warrington in 1946 and spent the earliest part of his life in Grappenhall before his family moved to Hong Kong when he was one.
His childhood would prove unusually peripatetic. In his memoir Vagabond, published last year, Curry recalled how the family moved between British seaside towns roughly every 18 months during his early years, eventually settling in Plymouth when he was 11.
From those beginnings came one of Britain’s most distinctive performers.
For millions, Curry will forever be Dr Frank-N-Furter, the swaggering, corseted scientist at the heart of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Curry originated the role on stage before carrying it into the 1975 film adaptation, creating a performance that would become a cultural phenomenon and turn the Warrington-born actor into a cult icon.
Half a century later, the influence of that performance is still being felt.
Luke Evans, who later played Frank-N-Furter in a Broadway revival, described Curry as “a force, a bright fierce flame, an exquisite charm”.
In a letter recently written to Curry, Evans thanked him for his fearlessness and for “creating something so enduring, and for inspiring generations of actors to be a little braver than they thought they could be”.
Susan Sarandon, Curry’s Rocky Horror co-star, remembered him as “a funny, sexy, original”.
“What I loved about him most was his heart,” she said.
“Thank you Tim for meaning so much to so many people.”
But reducing Curry to Frank-N-Furter would barely scratch the surface of a remarkable body of work.
He terrified a generation as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King’s It. He played the suspicious butler Wadsworth in Clue, appeared as the villainous Rooster in Annie and was the wonderfully pompous Plaza Hotel concierge Mr Hector in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
There were roles in The Hunt for Red October, The Three Musketeers and Scary Movie 2, while younger audiences encountered him alongside Kermit and Miss Piggy as Long John Silver in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island.
The Muppets said Curry was one of the few humans “to have earned the title of honorary Muppet”.
“As a performer he was unparalleled – witty, charming, unnerving, and deeply funny. We will always consider it one of our greatest treasures to have been part of Long John Silver’s crew,” it said.
His stage career was just as significant.
Curry returned to Broadway and the West End as King Arthur in Spamalot, adding another celebrated performance to a career that had begun in theatre decades earlier.
Writer and composer Richard O’Brien, who co-wrote Rocky Horror, remembered Curry as “a wonderful man by nature who was also a wonderful performer”.
“He never sought attention and never put himself before the roles that he played,” O’Brien said. “He was, in short, a good egg and class act.”
That ability to disappear into a character – while somehow remaining unmistakably Tim Curry – became his calling card.
American comedian Carol Burnett said “nobody could play lovable villains better than he could”, while his Home Alone 2 co-star Rob Schneider remembered a performer capable of doing more with a look than many actors managed with an entire scene.
“A truly gifted performer of stage and screen, his one eyebrow could say more than most actors entire bodies,” Schneider said.
“I am grateful to have the rare gift of watching him work, he made you better just standing near him.”
Curry’s life changed dramatically after he suffered a major stroke in 2012, leaving him using a wheelchair. He subsequently stepped back from much of his acting and public work, although he continued to engage with audiences through virtual conventions and online appearances.
In 2015, he made a rare public appearance to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Actors Fund Tony Awards Viewing Party in Los Angeles.
His longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz said Curry “passed away peacefully at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles on August 25”.
For Nell Campbell, who appeared alongside him in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, his death felt like losing far more than a former colleague.
“I feel like the head of our family has just died because he was the head of the Rocky Horror family,” she told the BBC.
Clue co-star Michael McKean said their final conversation had been about “life and love and laughter”.
“Our blessing was that we had Tim Curry in our lives. RIP, my friend,” he said.
It is an epitaph that could stretch far beyond the people who actually knew him.
Curry left Warrington as a baby and eventually made his home thousands of miles away in Los Angeles. In between came a career that crossed continents, genres and generations – Broadway and the West End, Hollywood blockbusters, cult cinema, horror, comedy, children’s films and television.
Few performers could convincingly be Pennywise, King Arthur, Long John Silver and Frank-N-Furter. Fewer still could make every one of them unforgettable.
Tim Curry did. And it all started in the North.
