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It’s our depressing destiny to lose Dolly Parton and Tim Curry in a one-two punch on the finish of summer season 2026. Both died at eighty years outdated, and it appears damned unfair that each didn’t reside to be 120 and die mid-performance, which was Parton’s said aim.
What unites Parton and Curry is their pleasure. Two happier individuals can be arduous to determine within the notoriously tragic world of showbiz fame, the place behind-the-scenes lives have a tendency towards grim pathos. Dolly Parton was recognized worldwide for her virtually unbelievable ranges of wide-smiling, life-loving élan that she managed to speak to just about everybody she met, and to everybody she didn’t, through wildly well-liked songs and movie and tv performances radiating ecstasy.
Tim Curry’s Joker-esque grin was equally vast and contained one thing else, an virtually salacious glee in efficiency. Nobody was going to should ask him twice to rise up there and supply some splendidly extroverted leisure that might give the general public one thing to cheer about. Like so many British actors, he approached his profession with alacrity, keen to point out up for nearly something. Theater, motion pictures, tv, music movies, audiobook and animated movie and TV voice work — you title it, you’ll discover Tim Curry there. He even minimize a couple of albums.
And his superstar impersonations? Chef’s kiss. He did a fond however unsparing tackle Mick Jagger’s pop-eyed, twitchy, mouthy, chicken-dance strutting to “Satisfaction” that’s a factor of magnificence and a pleasure endlessly.
Stage-trained, with an enormous, expressive voice, he first made his mark within the 1968 London manufacturing of the landmark hippie musical Hair, and from there went immediately into his breakthrough position of mad scientist and übersexy “sweet transvestite from Transylvania,” Dr Frank-N-Furter, within the legendary camp-rock musical The Rocky Horror Show. The present was such a smash, it went on to tour America from New York City to Los Angeles and made Tim Curry a family title. The 1975 Rocky Horror movie model turned a cult hit that was thought of such required viewing amongst younger individuals, it kicked off the “Midnight Movie” phenomenon on faculty campuses throughout the United States.
It was in LA that Curry discovered himself most feted, the place, as he put it, he went from “grubbing around” attempting to pay the lease to “sitting by Jack Nicholson’s swimming pool.”
But it was additionally the place he discovered himself having to come back to phrases with the thorny expertise of sustaining a showbiz profession and negotiating media fame. His response was sometimes healthful and sensible: he started studying biographies of well-known bygone film actors to see how they’d managed it.
Typecasting in Hollywood is particularly pernicious, and Curry discovered himself continuously requested to reprise the Dr Frank-N-Furter impact by taking part in exuberant roles in drag. An easy wit, Curry joked that he countered this tendency as soon as and for all by growing older with a purpose to turn into “chubby and plain.”
And he additionally found there have been pitfalls to being a British actor in Hollywood typically, in that there have been only some roles on fixed supply for Brits. This commentary led to a three-word greeting at all times exchanged when encountering former Monty Python member Eric Idle: “Butlers and villains.”
However, forged Curry as a butler, and also you’ll inevitably get the loudest, funniest, most garrulous, and overly self-dramatizing English butler that ever lived, and his delightfully braying Wadsworth in Clue (1985) is the end result.
Curry was at all times such a giant presence, it was deemed not possible to forged him as a self-effacing introvert or any sort of wallflower. If he’s onstage in The Pirates of Penzance, he’s taking part in the Pirate King and incomes a 1982 Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. If he’s beginning his voice-acting profession in a Hanna–Barbera cartoon depicting the Garden of Eden, he’s taking part in the snake and hissing out all the perfect strains. And he’s by no means not employed doing cartoon voice work thereafter. He gained a Daytime Emmy for the cartoon collection Peter Pan & the Pirates (1990–91), taking part in — you guessed it — the colorfully craven Captain Hook.
“I’m a toon type of guy,” he stated cheerfully.
Onstage within the 1980 Broadway manufacturing of Amadeus, he’s nominated for a Tony Award taking part in the obnoxious younger genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In Clive Donner’s 1982 TV film Oliver Twist, he’s the terrifying, murderous villain Bill Sikes. In Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985), he’s Darkness. In Muppet Treasure Island (1996), he’s “the sweet scoundrel pirate” Long John Silver. And within the first display screen model of Stephen King’s It (1990), he’s inevitably the fanged clown Pennywise terrorizing kids and guffawing with evil glee over it.
So many persistently, unabashedly oversize performances gained a number of affection from the general public over the many years. Because, to place it brutally, we reside in an ever-duller period in the case of actors, particularly, but additionally performers typically. There’s a lot tiresome ego and inventive pretension and, beneath all that mess, cowardly concern of risk-taking that it’s an actual thrill when somebody like Tim Curry virtually prances out entrance — he’s so glad to present his all for leisure.
Curry titled his 2025 memoir Vagabond due to his personal roving life and the truth that, as he explained, “in the 17th century, in the criminal code, actors were lumped together with thieves and vagabonds.” He was a heartening throwback to far more vivid days of yore when it got here to efficiency, and along with his regular congenial self-awareness, he was pleased to announce the actual fact.
He had a somewhat tough childhood, continuously on the transfer because the son of a naval chaplain who spent most of his time at sea. At age twelve, Curry misplaced his kindly, humorous father — who was solely forty-five — to an premature stroke. After he turned an actor, Curry channeled “his mercurial mother’s rages” into a spread of darkish, daunting characters.
In 2012, Curry almost died of a stroke that partially paralyzed him. Terrified he may be confronting his father’s destiny, confined to a wheelchair, and solely progressively recovering his powers of speech, Curry nonetheless couldn’t think about a lifetime of inactivity. With his typical jaunty braveness, he pivoted to memoir writing, then narrated the audiobook model.
It’s heartwarming to learn that after a few years of high-spirited partying, in later maturity Curry had come to like his home life extravagantly. His thought of an awesome night had turn into studying books within the firm of his canine, and avid gardening — his father’s interest when ashore. “If you’re English, somewhere around thirty a trowel appears in your hand, sort of like a prosthetic device,” he stated.
Even after his stroke, Curry stated he couldn’t think about retiring. So it’s a bitter blow that forces exterior himself have put an finish to Tim Curry’s performing joys. Still, remember that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is at all times taking part in someplace on this planet.
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