Tim Curry Died at 80 on the Same Day as Dolly Parton

Caption: Tim Curry in a 1978 publicity photo. Credit: A&M Records, via Wikimedia Commons.

August 25

Tim Curry, the English actor whose Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show became one of the most imitated performances in film, died on August 25 at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles. He was 80. His manager and publicist confirmed the death, saying he “passed away peacefully at his home.” Police responded at 11:23 that night and found no indication of foul play. A cause has not been disclosed.

Dolly Parton died the same day, also at 80. Both were born in 1946, Parton in January and Curry in April.

The Performance Everyone Knows

Rocky Horror was a commercial failure on release in 1975 and then became the most durable midnight movie ever made, running continuously in theaters for fifty years with audiences performing along in costume. Curry originated Frank-N-Furter on stage in London in 1973 and carried it into the film, and the character has been copied at every subsequent showing by people who were not born when it opened.

What He Did Around It

Curry spent decades refusing to let one role define the working actor underneath it. He played Pennywise in the 1990 television adaptation of It, a performance that terrified a generation of children on network television with no special effects to speak of. He played Rooster in Annie, Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, and Wadsworth in Clue. He was nominated for a Tony three times, and he built a substantial second career in voice work, where a voice that specific was an asset rather than a typecast.

The Last Fourteen Years

Curry had a stroke in 2012. He did not retire. He continued voice work and appeared at conventions and screenings from a wheelchair, and he was direct in interviews about what had changed, saying publicly that he still could not walk.

He gave few concessions to the fact in his public manner. The stroke did not become his story, and he did not permit it to be treated as one, which is a decision most performers of his visibility do not make.

Two Announcements, One Day

Parton and Curry shared almost nothing professionally. They shared a birth year, a death date, and an odd overlap in cultural function, in that both were performers whose most famous work was an act of costume so complete that the audience treated the character as a real person. The coincidence is not meaningful. It is simply the kind of thing that happens, and both announcements landed inside the same news cycle, which is why they will be remembered together by people who never connected them before this week.

References: Tim Curry, actor known for “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “It,” dies at age 80 | Tim Curry Dead: ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Star Was 80 | Dolly Parton died after a brief period of cancer