Tim Curry, the British actor whose corseted, fishnet-clad Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” became a permanent fixture of film history, has died at 80. Publicist Sean Katz confirmed to USA TODAY that the actor died peacefully at his home in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 25, 2026.
Katz passed along a statement released on behalf of Marcia Hurwitz, Curry’s longtime manager and friend, saying that what those close to him would remember most were his curiosity and his generosity, both of which stayed open until the end. A cause of death was not disclosed.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, officers were called at 11:20 p.m. Tuesday to a death investigation concerning a man in his 80s at a Los Angeles address. The Los Angeles Fire Department said its crews responded to a medical emergency at the same address at 10:42 p.m. Tuesday, where an adult man was pronounced dead.
Curry had been in poor health since 2012, when a major stroke left him partially paralyzed. Speaking at a 2025 event held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, he told the crowd that walking was still beyond him, that his left leg continued to give him real trouble and that there would be no singing or dancing from him.
From “Hair” to Frank-N-Furter
Born Timothy James Curry on April 19, 1946, in Cheshire, England, he was the child of a school secretary and a Methodist chaplain serving in the Royal Navy. His father had a stroke when Curry was 11 and later died of pneumonia. After studying drama at the University of Birmingham, Curry landed his first professional job straight out of school: the original 1968 West End staging of the rock musical “Hair.”
It was during that engagement that he got to know castmate Richard O’Brien, who in 1973 handed him the role of Frank-N-Furter in a musical he was then writing. Curry introduced the character that year in the tiny upstairs space at London’s Royal Court Theatre, helping transform a figure originally conceived as a German scientist in a lab coat into a creation in corset and fishnet stockings who spoke like the queen.
Fox’s 1975 film version, featuring a young Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, was a flop out of the gate. It later grew into a midnight-screening tradition of costumes, props and shouted callbacks that has lasted more than five decades — no other movie has ever had a longer continuous theatrical run. Its songs included “The Time Warp,” “Science Fiction/Double Feature,” “Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch Me” and Curry’s bawdy showstopper, “Sweet Transvestite.”
“It’s given a lot of people permission to be themselves,” Curry told USA TODAY last fall, saying that was how he would like to be remembered.
The Clown That Scared a Generation
In 1990, Curry frightened a mass audience as Pennywise the Clown in the two-part, four-hour ABC miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel “It,” which was watched in more than 37 million households. He turned every assumption about children’s entertainers upside down, deploying a low, rasping growl and a New York accent. Director Tommy Lee Wallace said in 2017 that his role was largely to hand Curry the stage and then keep out of the way, comparing the actor’s off-the-cuff improvising to that of Robin Williams.
Three Tony Nods and a Memoir
Three Tony nominations for best actor came his way: for creating the role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1981 Broadway staging of “Amadeus,” a contest he lost to castmate Ian McKellen, who played Antonio Salieri; for the alcoholic actor Alan Swann in the 1993 musical “My Favorite Year”; and for King Arthur in Monty Python’s “Spamalot” in 2005. He had signed on for that last part when the production opened in Chicago in 2004 and stuck with it for three years, including a London engagement.
His screen work showed a startling range: swindler Rooster Hannigan opposite Carol Burnett’s Miss Hannigan and Aileen Quinn in the title role of 1982’s “Annie”; the unflappable butler Wadsworth in 1985’s “Clue,” with Madeline Kahn and Christopher Lloyd; the horned, tomato-red Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott’s “Legend” with Tom Cruise the same year; Long John Silver in 1996’s “Muppet Treasure Island”; a suspicious Plaza Hotel concierge in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”; and Gomez Addams in 1998’s “Addams Family Reunion.” He also appeared in “The Hunt for Red October,” “Kinsey,” “The Three Musketeers,” “Scary Movie 2,” the 1995 thriller “Congo,” “Oliver Twist” and “Will & Grace.” His own favorites were “Clue” and 1991’s “Oscar,” the Sylvester Stallone screwball comedy in which he played dialectician Dr. Thornton Poole opposite Marisa Tomei. After years away, he returned in the horror film “Stream,” which reached theaters in August 2024.
His voice sustained a career of its own. Between the late 1970s and the early ’80s, Curry put out three albums that mixed original rock songs with covers, among them Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell numbers, and his audiobook narration of Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” brought him a Grammy nomination. His bombastic Soviet Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in the 2008 video game “Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3” turned him into a meme for younger audiences, with one clip surpassing 10 million views on YouTube. Curry never married and had no children; in his memoir, “Vagabond,” which he promoted on “CBS Sunday Morning” in October 2025, he wrote that he had loved and been loved.
Tributes From Stage and Screen
Burnett posted a clip of Curry playing her smarmy brother in “Annie” alongside co-star Bernadette Peters and wrote on social media that “nobody could play lovable villains better than he could.” Welsh actor Luke Evans, who played Frank-N-Furter in a Broadway revival, called Curry a bright, fierce flame and wrote in a recent letter that being compared to him ranked among the greatest compliments he had received. The official Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway account thanked the actor for giving the world more freedom and fearlessness. Curry died the same day as singer Dolly Parton; both were 80, and fans reacted to the coincidence.