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Tim Curry dies at 80: The Warrington boy who made Frank-N-Furter immortal
Published 22:04 26 Aug 2026 BST
Updated 06:35 27 Aug 2026 BST
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An unforgettable role in cinema history
English actor Tim Curry's death at the age of 80 was announced on Wednesday and confirmed by the BBC.
It closes one of the strangest and most gleefully unclassifiable careers British acting has produced.
A boy from Warrington who turned a lingerie-clad mad scientist into a permanent fixture of world cinema, then spent five decades stealing films from underneath much bigger names.
Curry was best known for playing the outlandish Frank-N-Furter in film musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a role he first played on stage before the film version, which was released in 1975 and has remained a cult favourite.
The actor also played fearsome clown Pennywise in the 1990 TV version of Stephen King's It, and was Long John Silver in 1996's Muppet Treasure Island.
His other films included Annie, The Hunt for Red October, Home Alone 2, Scary Movie 2 and he was nominated for three Tony Awards on Broadway.
How Tim Curry became Frank-N-Furter
Born in Warrington in 1946, Curry’s first acting job after university was the original London production of Hair in 1968.
A fellow cast member, Richard O’Brien, asked him in 1973 to audition for a musical he was writing, and cast him as the flamboyant “sweet transvestite” Dr Frank-N-Furter.
Curry put his stamp on the riotous scientist upstairs at London’s Royal Court, the show’s popularity snowballed, and a film followed.
Released in 1975 alongside Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and O’Brien himself, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not an immediate hit, and then simply refused to stop playing. It still holds the record for the longest-running theatrical release in film history.
The villain nobody else could have played
What followed was a career built almost entirely on delicious menace. He was Miss Hannigan’s con-artist brother in the 1982 musical Annie, Wadsworth in the 1985 murder mystery Clue, and a fixture of the same year’s fantasy Legend opposite Tom Cruise.
He turned up in The Hunt for Red October, Home Alone 2 and the 1995 gorilla thriller Congo, was Long John Silver in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island, and gave a generation of British children a lasting problem with storm drains, as his Pennywise the clown in the 1990 television version of Stephen King’s It remains the benchmark.
The stage never let him go either. Three Tony nominations came his way: for Mozart in the original Broadway Amadeus in 1981, for My Favorite Year in 1993, and for King Arthur in the Monty Python musical Spamalot in 2005.
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