Tim Curry is an English actor and singer. He is known for working in a diverse range of theatre, film, and television, most often portraying villainous characters. 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 next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show (1973). Curry recalled his first encounter with the project: I’d heard about the play because I lived on Paddington Street, and there was an old gym a few doors away. I saw Richard O’Brien in the street, and he said he’d just been to the gym to see if he could find a muscleman who could sing. I said, “Why do you need him to sing?” [laughs] And he told me that his musical was going to be done, and I should talk to Jim Sharman. He gave me the script, and I thought, “Boy, if this works, it’s going to be a smash.”
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. This change carried over to The Rocky Horror Picture Show which made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.
In 1981, Curry formed part of the original cast in the Broadway show Amadeus, playing the title character, Mozart. He was nominated for his first Tony Award (Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play) for this role but lost out to his co-star Ian McKellen, who played Salieri. In 1982, Curry took the part of the Pirate King in the Drury Lane production of Joe Papp’s version of The Pirates of Penzance opposite George Cole, earning enthusiastic reviews.
n 1985, Curry starred in the movie 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, he appeared in the film Clue as Wadsworth the butler. After this, Curry began to be cast in more comedy roles throughout the late 1980s and ’90s such as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.
One of Curry’s best-known television roles (and best-known roles overall) is as Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 horror miniseries Stephen King’s It. Aside from one Fangoria interview in 1990, Curry never publicly acknowledged his involvement in It until an interview with Moviefone in 2015, where he called the role of Pennywise “a wonderful part”.
In 2004, Curry began his role of King Arthur in Spamalot in Chicago. Written by 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 London’s West End, where Spamalot opened in October 2006. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and also won the Theatregoer’s Choice Award (getting 39% of the votes cast by over 12,000 theatregoers) as Best Actor in a Musical.
Aside from his performances on various soundtrack records, Curry has had some success as a solo musical artist. Curry received classical vocal training as a boy. He has mentioned that his musical influences included jazz vocalists such as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as a teenager. Curry’s second and most successful album Fearless was more rock-oriented than Read My Lips and mostly featured original songs rather than cover versions. The record included Curry’s only US charting songs: “I Do the Rock” and “Paradise Garage”.
Curry uses a wheelchair after suffering a major stroke in July 2012. This has limited his acting to mostly voice-over, although he also continued to perform as a singer and started making appearances at fan conventions across North America.
