Tim Curry died Tuesday night August 25 at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles. He was 80 years old. His longtime manager Marcia Hurwitz confirmed the death to Variety.
No cause was immediately provided, though Curry had dealt with serious health consequences since suffering a severe stroke in 2012 that required brain surgery.
In an interview last year, he said he still could not walk as a result. "I still have real problems with my left leg," he said. There is no foul play suspected.
Timothy James Curry was born April 19, 1946 in Grappenhall, Cheshire, England. He studied at the University of Birmingham, launched his career in London's West End in the late 1960s and by 1973 was playing Dr. Frank N. Furter, the self-described "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania," in Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show in London.
He took it to Los Angeles, then Broadway, then to the 1975 film directed by Jim Sharman. Critics mostly ignored it. Audiences at midnight showings never did. Fifty years later they still show up in costume.
The rest of the career that followed was remarkable in its range. He played Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, Tim Curry in Clue, Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, Wadsworth the butler, Mr. Hector in The Hunt for Red October and the original Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 1990 Stephen King miniseries It, a performance that shaped the nightmares of an entire generation of children and that many adults still cannot fully shake.
He won a Daytime Emmy. He received Tony and Olivier nominations. He published his memoir Vagabond last year while still unable to walk.
He was 80 years old. The world had him for exactly the right amount of time to be permanently haunted.