RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Add The New York Post on Google If “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was the ultimate cult movie, Tim Curry was the ultimate cult actor.
To be his fan was to be his follower. Curry was, simply put, an addictive presence to behold.
The gregarious Brit, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 80, oozed an eccentric, ginormous personality that exploded off the screen and stage and inspired a passionate fandom spanning multiple generations.
Close your eyes and you can hear his chesty, devilish laugh. You can picture his mischievous grin. That black corset and the fishnets are forever seared onto your retinas. Curry was not in the business of being forgettable.
Part glam rocker, part butler, part Mephistopheles, spicy Curry fused that aura onto every role he played — from a sweet transvestite from Transylvania to a demonic clown terrorizing a town in Maine.
If you cast Tim Curry in a movie, it’s because you wanted pure Tim Curry .
Everybody has their favorite. Younger viewers will know him as the suspicious Plaza hotel concierge in “Home Alone 2.” And millennials have a soft spot for his performance as Wadsworth “Clue.” I’m partial to his hilarious Broadway turn as King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
But his most famous role was, of course, his breakout turn as the lascivious Dr. Frank ‘N Furter in 1975’s “Rocky Horror,” a part 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 cast of “Hair.” Yet at 27 years old he already had a rock star’s confidence.
“Tim auditioned singing Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti,’ ” Sharman told 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.”
Adventurous is right. Curry told The Post in 1981 that he gravitated towards the kind of roles “where you may fall on your face if you don’t pull it off.”
"Rocky Horror" went down a treat with UK ticketbuyers, and he took his Frank to LA and Broadway.
Then Curry reprised it in the classic movie, opposite Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf. It was nearly a big flop. “Rocky Horror” only became popular after rowdy audiences started shouting back at the screen during midnight showing at the Waverly in Greenwich Village — a tradition that continues today at the Village East.
But I’m convinced that cherished ritual and lore would not exist were it not for its lead actor. To my mind, it was Curry’s gung-ho, shame-free performance that gave audience members permission to “give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” He was puppeteering them just as much as Frank was manipulating innocent Brad and Janet.
In the same way that movie had a slow start, Curry’s film career didn’t take off right away either. First he came back to Broadway. The actor starred in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” in 1975 and he played wacky Mozart in “Amadeus” opposite Ian McKellen in 1980.
And then came Hollywood. He was Rooster in 1982’s “Annie,” however he loathed working with child actors.
“One rather dreads them,” Curry told The Post.
He put his money where his mouth is. Curry never married and had no children.
Yet he nonetheless became a fixture of family entertainment. A man who made his name playing a promiscuous troublemaker was suddenly embodying erudite authority figures in kids flicks like the Plaza clerk in “Home Alone 2” and the butler in “Clue.” What was fun, 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 red wig and slopped on the white makeup for what’s gotta be his second-most memorable turn: as Pennywise the clown in the TV version of Stephen King’s “It.” The villain, the walking manifestation of fear, played up Curry’s signature quality — his ability to be both enticing and dangerous. A human Venus flytrap.
Curry continued working after that, mostly on TV series 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 kept him mostly away from the screen.
“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 hard for we of the cult of Curry to accept: that a performer still so vivacious, expressive and singular was forced into an early retirement by a cruel health scare.
But his work lives on. College kids 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 classic.
And as for the indomitable Curry, he’s going home.
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