LOS ANGELES, CA – OCTOBER 28: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) Actor Tim Curry attends The Rocky Horror Picture Show 35th anniversary to benefit The Painted Turtle at The Wiltern on October 28, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Painted Turtle)
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Prolific actor Tim Curry died on Tuesday at age 80, leaving behind a legacy of memorable roles including Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the cult movie classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the TV miniseries version of Stephen King’s IT.
Curry died at his home in Toluca Lake, Calif., his manager told Variety. Curry’s cause of death was not revealed, but the actor has been dealing with health challenges since suffering a debilitating stroke in 2012.
During a 50th anniversary screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Museum in September 2025, Curry recalled details about the life-changing event for the crowd.
“I was having a massage at the time and I didn’t even actually notice anything, but the guy who was doing the massage said, ‘I’m worried about you, I want to call an ambulance.’ And he did, and I said, ‘That’s so silly,’” Curry told the audience (via The Hollywood Reporter). “I still can’t walk, which is why I’m in this silly chair, and that’s very limiting. So I won’t be singing and I won’t be dancing very soon. I still have real problems with my left leg.”
From right to left, actors Richard O’Brien, Tim Curry and Patricia Quinn as Riff Raff, Dr Frank-N-Furter and Magenta respectively, on a lobby card from the 1975 musical comedy ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, produced by 20th Century Fox. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)
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During the Academy Museum’s 2025 screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Curry admitted that he thought his iconic turn as Dr. Frank-N-Furter was going to hinder the prospects of appearing in other projects after the 1975 film. That same year, when Curry was contacted by Stephen Frears to star in his TV movie Three Men in a Boat, the actor learned instead how helpful the film was to the director.
“I said, ‘What makes you think that I can play a Victorian bank clerk?’ and he said, ‘If you can play Frank-N-Furter, you can play anything,’” Curry recalled (via THR).
And time proved Frears’ observation right. Between his on-camera and voice acting work, Curry amassed more than 240 projects over his 50-plus years in film, television and video games.
Stephen King’s “IT” – 11/18 and 11/20/90 In this Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Novel for Television based on the best-selling Stephen King novel, played Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, one of seven childhood friends who are reunited in their middle ages to confront an evil entity (a clown named Pennywise). (Photo by Bob D’Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)TIM CURRY
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Tim Curry Described His Pennywise From ‘IT’ As ‘A Smile Gone Bad.”
Fifteen years after the release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Curry found himself in the world of celebrated horror author Stephen King, where he played the menacing clown, Pennywise, in a two-part miniseries based on the writer’s bestselling novel IT.
Former Fangoria reporter Steve Newton interviewed Curry on the set while the prolific action was filming the 1990 miniseries, which the writer repurposed for his Ear of Newt blog in 2014.
Describing who would go on to become one of King’s scariest creations, Curry told Newton, “I off quite a few people here and there one way or another. But Pennywise turns out not to be that physical, actually — it’s mostly mental cruelty. What’s fun about him is that a clown is traditionally a very cozy, comforting kind of cheery image, and Pennywise is none of these things. I think of him all the time as a smile gone bad — that’s my image for him.”
Curry, of course, appeared in a variety of other notable films over his career, including Clue, Annie, Muppet Treasure Island and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
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