There Was Only One Tim Curry, and Nobody Ever Played It Safe Like Him
Tim Curry has died at 80. The singular British actor, singer and voice performer died peacefully at his Los Angeles home on August 25, 2026, according to his longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz. A cause of death was not disclosed.
For a lot of people, the immediate memories are The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pennywise in It. We can never pretend those were the defining Tim Curry staples in our own coming-of-age rooms. They were not.
What we did grow up on was something just as unmistakably Curry: the endless character transformations, the voice, the timing, the side-eye, the sense that even when he was not the lead, he could walk into a scene and quietly steal the entire thing.
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THERE WAS ONLY ONE TIM CURRY
A career built on fearless characters, impossible-to-copy timing and performances that generations carried with them.
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For Us, Tim Curry Was Long John Silver, the Plaza Concierge and Rooster Hannigan
There was Muppet Treasure Island in 1996, where Curry played Long John Silver with exactly the right mix of charm, danger and theatrical swagger. There was Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992, where his suspicious Plaza Hotel concierge turned a supporting role into one of the movie’s most memorable performances.
And there was Annie in 1982, with Curry as Rooster Hannigan, scheming his way through the musical alongside Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters. That version of Tim Curry — sly, funny, slightly dangerous and always fully committed — is the one etched into our own pop-culture memory.
Of Course, the Rest of the World Had Its Own Tim Curry
Curry originated Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1973 London stage production of The Rocky Horror Show before carrying the role into the 1975 film. It became the performance most permanently attached to his name — flamboyant, fearless and impossible to imitate without immediately being compared back to him.
He was also unforgettable as Pennywise in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and his screen work stretched through Clue, Legend, The Three Musketeers, Congo, Charlie’s Angels, Scary Movie 2 and far beyond.
Onstage, Curry earned three Tony Award nominations for Amadeus, My Favorite Year and Spamalot. He also built an enormous voice-acting résumé and won a Daytime Emmy for Peter Pan and the Pirates. Even after a serious stroke in 2012 left him using a wheelchair, he continued working, appearing publicly and staying connected to the work that made him beloved.
Watch Tim Curry in One of His Classic Screen Performances
The first supplied clip revisits Curry in a classic screen role from his long film career.
Watch Tim Curry Perform “Easy Street” in Annie
Curry performs the 1982 musical number as Rooster Hannigan alongside Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters.
One More Tim Curry Performance to Remember Him By
The final supplied clip offers one more look at Curry’s unmistakable screen presence.
Source: Tim Curry’s manager Marcia Hurwitz, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times and the supplied YouTube clips.
