If “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was the final cult film, Tim Curry was the final cult actor.
To be his fan was to be his follower. Curry was, merely put, an addictive presence to behold.
The gregarious Brit, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 80, oozed an eccentric, ginormous persona that exploded off the screen and stage and impressed a passionate fandom spanning a number of generations.
Close your eyes and you can hear his chesty, devilish giggle. You can image his mischievous grin. That black corset and the fishnets are perpetually seared onto your retinas. Curry was not in the business of being forgettable.
Part glam rocker, half butler, half Mephistopheles, spicy Curry fused that aura onto every function he performed — from a candy transvestite from Transylvania to a demonic clown terrorizing a city in Maine.
If you forged Tim Curry in a film, it’s because you needed pure Tim Curry.
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Actor Tim Curry died in LA at age 80. REUTERS
Everybody has their favourite. Younger viewers will know him as the suspicious Plaza resort concierge in “Home Alone 2.” And millennials have a tender spot for his efficiency as Wadsworth “Clue.” I’m partial to his hilarious Broadway flip as King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
But his most well-known function was, of course, his breakout flip as the lascivious Dr. Frank ‘N Furter in 1975’s “Rocky Horror,” a half he originated onstage in London two years prior.
Born in 1946 in Cheshire, England, Curry was a nobody when he tried out for director Jim Sharman’s musical at the Royal Court Theatre. He’d been in the British forged of “Hair.” Yet at 27 years previous he already had a rock star’s confidence.
“Tim auditioned singing Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti,’ ” Sharman instructed The Post in 2020. “He ripped the Royal Court roof off. He had it, then and there . . . and, beneath the makeup, Tim was that rare thing, a thinking actor with an adventurous streak, and [had] the technical chops to really deliver. He simply got it.”
Curry’s breakout function was as Dr. Frank ‘N Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Adventurous is proper. Curry instructed The Post in 1981 that he gravitated towards the form of roles “where you may fall on your face if you don’t pull it off.”
“Rocky Horror” went down a deal with with UK ticketbuyers, and he took his Frank to LA and Broadway.
Then Curry reprised it in the traditional film, reverse Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf. It was practically a massive flop. “Rocky Horror” only grew to become common after rowdy audiences began shouting back at the screen during midnight exhibiting at the Waverly in Greenwich Village — a custom that continues immediately at the Village East.
But I’m satisfied that cherished ritual and lore would not exist were it not for its lead actor. To my thoughts, it was Curry’s gung-ho, shame-free efficiency that gave viewers members permission to “give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” He was puppeteering them just as much as Frank was manipulating harmless Brad and Janet.
Curry is just as accountable for “Rocky Horror”‘s success as the midnight screenings are. ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
In the same method that film had a sluggish begin, Curry’s movie profession didn’t take off immediately either. First he came back to Broadway. The actor starred in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” in 1975 and he performed wacky Mozart in “Amadeus” reverse Ian McKellen in 1980.
And then came Hollywood. He was Rooster in 1982’s “Annie,” however he loathed working with youngster actors.
“One rather dreads them,” Curry instructed The Post.
He put his money where his mouth is. Curry never married and had no kids.
The actor was chilling as Pennywise the clown in “It.” Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Yet he nonetheless grew to become a fixture of household leisure. A person who made his title enjoying a promiscuous troublemaker was all of a sudden embodying erudite authority figures in children flicks like the Plaza clerk in “Home Alone 2” and the butler in “Clue.” What was enjoyable, though, was there was always a naughty twinkle in his eye. Everybody — the adults anyway — was in on the joke.
In 1990, Curry donned a pink wig and slopped on the white make-up for what’s gotta be his second-most memorable flip: as Pennywise the clown in the TV model of Stephen King’s “It.” The villain, the strolling manifestation of worry, performed up Curry’s signature high quality — his potential to be both attractive and harmful. A human Venus flytrap.
Curry continued working after that, principally on TV collection and as a prolific voice actor. His sonorous brogue was intoxicating, to say the least. And he came back to Broadway in grand fashion in 2005’s hit musical “Spamalot.” But a debilitating stroke in 2012 stored him principally away from the screen.
Curry performed King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot” on Broadway. Getty Images
“I still can’t walk, which is why I’m in this silly chair,” he said in 2025. “That’s very limiting. I won’t be singing and I won’t be dancing very soon. I still have real problems with my left leg.”
That was laborious for we of the cult of Curry to settle for: that a performer still so vivacious, expressive and singular was pressured into an early retirement by a merciless health scare.
But his work lives on. College children are still dressing up like Dr. Frank, Riff Raff and Magenta at late-night campus screenings. “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” is an enduring Christmas traditional.
And as for the indomitable Curry, he’s going home.
