Tim Curry
Timothy James Curry is an Emmy Award-winning English actor and singer. He is famous for playing many villainous roles and rose to prominence as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the musical film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, reprising the role he had originated in the 1973 London, 1974 Los Angeles, and 1975 Broadway musical stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show.
Curry's other stage work includes various roles in the original West End production of Hair, Tristan Tzara in the 1975 West End and Broadway productions of Travesties, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1980 Broadway production of Amadeus, The Pirate King in the 1982 West End production of The Pirates of Penzance, Alan Swann in the Broadway adapatation of My Favorite Year in 1992, and King Arthur in Broadway and West End productions of Spamalot from 2005 to 2007. His theatre accolades include three Tony Award nominations and two Laurence Olivier Award nominations.
Curry has received acclaim for his onscreen roles, which include Rooster Hannigan in Annie, Darkness in Legend, Wadsworth in Clue, Pennywise in the miniseries It, the Concierge in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. His other notable film appearances include The Worst Witch, The Hunt for Red October, The Three Musketeers, Congo, Charlie's Angels, Scary Movie 2, and Kinsey.
Curry is also a prolific voice actor, with roles in animation including his Emmy Award-winning performance as Captain Hook on Peter Pan & the Pirates, Hexxus in Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Sir Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys, and Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. As a singer, Curry has released three rock-focused studio albums: Read My Lips, Fearless, and Simplicity.
Early life
Timothy James Curry was born on 19 April 1946 in Grappenhall, Cheshire, the son of school secretary Patricia and Royal Navy chaplain James Curry. The Currys had met in Malta and married in Egypt. He had an elder sister, Judith. Within a year of Curry's birth, the family moved to Hong Kong. During Curry's early childhood, the family moved to a different British seaside town every 18 months or so, eventually settling in Plymouth when Curry was 11.James Curry suffered a stroke when Curry was 11 years of age. Weeks later, in 1958, James Curry died of pneumonia. The Curry family then moved to South London, where he attended boarding school. Curry later attended Kingswood School in Bath, Somerset. Curry developed into a talented boy soprano. Deciding to concentrate on acting, he graduated from the University of Birmingham with a combined BA degree in English and drama in 1968.
Career
Acting
''Rocky Horror''
Curry's first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical Hair in 1968, where he met Richard O'Brien, who went on to write Curry's role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show. Curry recalled his first encounter with the project:Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, and later, with an American accent. In March 2005, in an interview with Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, he explained that he decided to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an English accent after listening to an English woman say, "Do you have a house in town or a house in the country?," and decided, "Yes, should sound like the Queen."
Curry originally thought the character was merely a laboratory doctor dressed in a white lab coat. However, at the suggestion of director Sharman, the character evolved into the diabolical mad scientist and transvestite with an upper-class Belgravia accent. An immediate hit, a reviewer at the premiere in London in June 1973 wrote that Curry gives a "garishly Bowiesque performance as the ambisextrous doctor." This change carried over to the 1975 film adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. Curry continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.
In an interview with NPR, Curry called Rocky Horror a "rite of passage", and added that the film is "a guaranteed weekend party to which you can go with or without a date and probably find one if you don't have one, and it's also a chance for people to try on a few roles for size, you know? Figure out, help them maybe figure out their own sexuality".
In 2016, Curry played the Criminologist in the television film remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 2025, Curry was an invited guest speaker at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures to celebrate the film's 50th anniversary.
Theatre
Shortly after the end of Rocky Horrors run on Broadway, Curry returned to the stage with Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. Travesties was a Broadway hit. It won two Tony Awards, as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and Curry's performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.In 1980, Curry formed part of the original cast in the Broadway show Amadeus, playing the title character, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Curry was nominated for his first Tony Award for this role but lost out to his co-star Ian McKellen, who played Antonio Salieri. In 1982, Curry took the part of the Pirate King in the Drury Lane production of Joe Papp's version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance opposite George Cole and Pamela Stephenson, earning enthusiastic reviews.
In the mid-1980s, Curry performed in The Rivals and in several plays with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, including The Threepenny Opera, Dalliance and Love For Love. From 1987 to 1988, he did the national tour of Me and My Girl in the lead role of Bill Snibson, a role originated on Broadway by Robert Lindsay. In 1989, Curry returned once again to the New York stage in The Art of Success, and in 1992 played Alan Swann in the Broadway version of My Favorite Year, earning him his second Tony Award nomination, this time for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. In 2001, Curry appeared as Scrooge in a musical version of the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol that played at Madison Square Garden.
In 2004, Curry began his role of King Arthur in Spamalot in Chicago. Directed by Mike Nichols, written by Monty Python member Eric Idle and based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. It sold more than $1 million worth of tickets in its first 24 hours. His performance brought him a third Tony nomination, again for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role at the Palace Theatre in the West End, where Spamalot opened on 16 October 2006. His final performance came on 6 January 2007. Curry was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for his work in Spamalot, and he also won the Theatregoers' Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical.
From May to August 2011, Curry was scheduled to portray the Player in a Trevor Nunn stage production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Chichester Festival Theatre and then in London. Curry withdrew from the production on 27 May, citing ill health but later admitting that he was fired for being unable to memorize his lines. From 26 to 29 April 2012, he appeared in Eric Idle's play What About Dick? at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Curry had originally appeared at a script reading for the play back in 2007 when it was still a work in progress.
Curry's career in theatre was honoured on 7 June 2015 at the Actors Fund's 19th annual Tony Awards Viewing Party, where he was awarded an Artistic Achievement Award.
Film
After The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Curry began to appear in many films, acting in supporting roles, such as Robert Graves in the horror film The Shout, as Johnny LaGuardia in Times Square, as Daniel Francis "Rooster" Hannigan in John Huston's 1982 film version of Annie, and as Jeremy Hancock in the political film The Ploughman's Lunch. In 1985, Curry starred in the fantasy film Legend as The Lord of Darkness. Director Ridley Scott cast Curry in the film after watching him in Rocky Horror, thinking he was ideal to play the role of Darkness. It took five and a half hours to apply the makeup needed for Darkness onto Curry and at the end of the day, he would spend an hour in a bath in order to liquefy the soluble spirit gum. The same year, Curry appeared in the comedy mystery film Clue as Wadsworth the butler.Starting in the 1990s, Curry began to appear more frequently in Hollywood film productions, including comedic roles such as Dr. Thornton Poole in Oscar, Mr. Hector, the suspicious Plaza Hotel concierge in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Jigsaw in Loaded Weapon 1, and as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. Curry also appeared in action films, such as the thriller The Hunt for Red October as Dr. Yevgeniy Petrov, the 1993 adaptation of The Three Musketeers as Cardinal Richelieu, the superhero film The Shadow as Farley Claymore, and the action adventure Congo as Herkermer Homolka. He also starred in the 1998 direct-to-video film Addams Family Reunion playing Gomez Addams.
In the early 2000s, Curry's big screen appearances lessened, but he did portray Roger Corwin in the film adaptation of Charlie's Angels, Professor Oldman in the parody film Scary Movie 2, and Thurman Rice in the biographical film Kinsey. His last major role in a feature film was as Alexander Monro in the British black comedy Burke & Hare.
In 2024, he had a cameo appearance in the horror film Stream, providing the voice of the mask character "Lockwood".