Tim Curry Played Pennywise and Nigel Thornberry

Tim Curry played the killer clown in It, the murderous butler in Clue, the suspicious hotel concierge in Home Alone 2, a peg-legged pirate in Muppet Treasure Island, and the booming voice of Nigel Thornberry. For decades, most fans had no idea it was the same man.

A Frank-N-Furter Born in 63 Seats

Curry was born on April 19, 1946, in Grappenhall, Cheshire, England. He trained as an actor and singer before landing the role that would define him.

In June 1973, at 27 years old, he created Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the original stage production of The Rocky Horror Show. It opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London, a room that seated just 63 people.

Curry gave the character a plummy, exaggerated accent modeled on Britain's Queen. The performance became the blueprint for one of the strangest and most enduring roles in entertainment history.

The Movie That Never Left

Two years later, Curry reprised the role on film in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It flopped in its initial run.

Then it found a second life at midnight. Starting in 1976 at New York's Waverly Theater, audiences began showing up in costume to shout lines back at the screen. By the end of the decade, it was playing at more than 230 theaters twice a week.

The film has never been pulled from release since. More than 50 years after it opened, it is still playing somewhere every weekend, making it the longest-running theatrical release in film history.

One Actor, Countless Faces

Curry spent the following decades building one of the most varied careers in Hollywood, often unrecognizable from role to role.

He played Wadsworth the butler in the 1985 comedy Clue, then terrified an entire generation as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 1990 TV adaptation of Stephen King's It.

He showed up as the twitchy hotel concierge in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992, then turned around and played Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island in 1996.

From 1998 to 2004, he voiced Nigel Thornberry, the eccentric British wildlife documentarian, on Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys. Millions of kids grew up quoting his catchphrase without knowing it belonged to the same man who played Pennywise.

He Kept Working

In July 2012, Curry suffered a major stroke that affected his mobility and left him unable to walk. He shifted his focus almost entirely to voice acting.

He didn't disappear from Rocky Horror, either. When Fox aired a television remake in October 2016, Curry returned as the Narrator, appearing on screen from a wheelchair.

He was open about needing the wheelchair and made clear he had no interest in hiding it. He kept working in the years that followed, taking on voice and narration roles even as his health declined.

Tim Curry died on August 25, 2026, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80. This weekend, somewhere, the midnight show goes on.

Photo: "UA Cinema Rocky Horror.jpg" by Mark Miller, Merced, California, 1978 - Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.