Tim Curry, legendary actor from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, dies at 80

Tim Curry, the legendary actor behind Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wadsworth in Clue and one very terrifying version of Pennywise the clown, has died. He was 80.

Curry died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz confirmed. No cause of death has been announced.

For some people, Tim Curry will always be Frank-N-Furter.

Curry originated the role in the 1973 London stage production of The Rocky Horror Show before taking it to the screen in 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The movie famously didn’t start out as a hit. It became something much stranger and more lasting instead: a midnight-movie institution that audiences are still showing up to see 50 years later.

But there are a lot of different Tim Currys depending on when you found him.

He was Wadsworth, the increasingly frantic butler trying to keep Clue from completely flying off the rails. He was the monstrous Darkness beneath all that makeup in Ridley Scott’s Legend. He was Pennywise in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King’s It, long before another generation met the character at the movies.

And if you grew up in the ’90s, there’s a pretty good chance you also know him as the Plaza Hotel concierge desperately trying to catch Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Curry also appeared in Annie, Muppet Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers and dozens of other films and television shows, while building an enormous second career as a voice actor. His voice credits included The Wild Thornberrys, FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Over the Garden Wall.

He never left the stage behind, either. Curry earned three Tony Award nominations during his career, for Amadeus, My Favorite Year and Spamalot.

Curry suffered a major stroke more than a decade ago and used a wheelchair afterward, but continued acting, doing voice work and appearing publicly. He remained closely connected to the enormous audience that had grown around Rocky Horror, a movie that followed him for essentially his entire career.

Last year, while marking the movie’s 50th anniversary, Curry told the Los Angeles Times that he had come to understand what Frank-N-Furter meant to the people who embraced the character.

“I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be,” Curry said. “I’m proud of that.”

Tim Curry was 80.