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RIP, Tim Curry: Ars remembers his top 10 iconic performances
A dashing pirate, a butler, a killer clown, an alien mad scientist in drag—the man had range.
It’s said celebrity deaths come in threes. We lost Sam Neill last month, and the legendary Dolly Parton yesterday. Now we find out that the universe has also seen fit to deprive us of the glorious presence of Tim Curry, who died at home yesterday in Los Angeles at the age of 80. No cause of death has been given, but Curry had been in ill health since 2012, when he suffered a stroke and required brain surgery; he had been confined to a wheelchair ever since.
Curry’s longtime friend and manager, Marcia Hurwitz, confirmed the actor’s passing to Deadline and said Curry had died peacefully. Per the official announcement:
Throughout his life, he refused to be boxed in or confined to others’ expectations. Across five decades, he moved fluidly between comedy, horror, drama, and music, delighting himself and his legion of fans with his countless dynamic personas. … He is, depending on who you ask, the definitive Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the definitive Pennywise, the man who made a butler’s death-scene monologue in Clue an all-time comedic bit, or simply ‘that unforgettable voice’ from a beloved cartoon of someone’s childhood.
Few actors can claim to have left as many distinct fingerprints on pop culture and though he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2012, he continued adding to his achievements as an artist and, most recently, a writer. Though widely known for his inimitable, flamboyant characters and colorful stage performances, his greatest legacies to those who knew him were his curious, expansive mind and generous, gentle heart, both of which remained open and filled with anticipation until his final breath.
As obituaries and fond tributes roll in, we at Ars choose to mark the passing of this extraordinary performer with our choices for Curry’s top 10 most iconic portrayals on stage, in film, and on television.
People sometimes forget that Curry was also a voice actor in addition to his many live-action roles, particularly for children’s fare, where his campy silliness played very well. He won an Emmy for voicing Captain Hook in 1990’s Peter Pan and the Pirates, and his work on The Wild Thornberrys (1998–2004) was particularly beloved. From 2012–2014, he played a villain, replacing the late Ian Abercrombie as the voice of Palpatine in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Home Alone 2 has become best known for Donald Trump’s cameo appearance giving directions to the lobby, but Curry stole every scene he was in with his portrayal of the stuffy concierge of the Plaza Hotel, Mr. Hector. He tries (and naturally fails) to match wits with Macaulay Culkin’s mischievously inventive Kevin, who has found himself in New York by accident with his father’s wallet and decides to run up a huge tab at the Plaza.
We at Ars are diehard fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Eric Idle loved it so much he wrote a hit Broadway musical based on the film: Spamalot (2004). Curry’s roots were in theater, particularly musicals; his very first stage role was a 1968 production of Hair in London’s West End. He went on to receive three Tony nominations, one for portraying Mozart in Amadeus (1980) and another for playing Alan Swann in My Favorite Year (1992). The third was for his performance as King Arthur in Spamalot, a role he reprised in London in 2006, snagging him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for good measure.
Equally delightful on the theatrical front was Curry’s joyously energetic 1982 performance as the swashbuckling Pirate King in a Drury Lane production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance. Clad in the character’s signature tight leather pants, Curry is more than up to the task of navigating the rapid-fire lyrics: “I’ll be true to the song I sing/and live and die a pirate king.” Because, you know, it’s “a glorious thing to be a pirate king.”