Tim Curry, who has Time-Warped his last at the age of 80, spent a lifetime proving that the line between high camp and high art is thinner than a fishnet stocking. The British actor, forever embalmed in the public mind as Dr Frank-N-Furter, the sweet transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, shuffled off this mortal coil on 25 August at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, having long since mastered the art of making the ridiculous look like destiny.
Born Timothy James Curry in Grappenhall, Cheshire, he arrived in the world with a voice that could curdle milk or seduce it, depending on the lighting. His father, a naval chaplain, departed early via stroke when Tim was twelve, an event the son later outdid by surviving his own, in 2012, with characteristic stubbornness and a wheelchair. From that point he continued working mostly by voice, which was just as well: the instrument had always been the real star, a baritone capable of velvet menace or velvet seduction, often in the same breath.
It was The Rocky Horror Picture Show that fixed him in amber. On stage and then on screen in 1975, Curry strutted about in heels and makeup as if the universe had been waiting for someone to demonstrate that gender is merely a costume change. Audiences of a certain age still shout the dialogue at midnight screenings, which must have been both flattering and faintly exhausting. He followed this with a gallery of villains and eccentrics: the devil in Legend, the butler in Clue, Pennywise the clown in the 1990 version of It, each performance suggesting that evil is best delivered with a raised eyebrow and perfect diction.
Nor did he neglect lighter fare. In Home Alone 2 he played Mr Hector, the Plaza’s haughty concierge, eyeing a credit-card-wielding child with the disdain of a maître d’ spotting a ketchup stain—comic precision in every arched brow. Four years later, as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, he swaggered among the felt and foam with RSC gravitas, singing and scheming as if the Muppets were fellow professionals of the highest order. Both roles showed his unerring instinct for the ridiculous: bureaucratic irritation made hilarious, piratical villainy oddly paternal.
Hollywood never quite knew what to do with him beyond the grotesque, and he never seemed to mind. He collected Tony nominations, voice roles by the dozen, and a memoir, Vagabond, published only last year, in which he revealed just enough to keep the curious hungry. Of his private life he remained resolutely opaque. “I have loved and been loved,” he wrote. “The rest is none of your business.” One suspects the line was delivered with a small, satisfied smile.
In an age that mistakes sincerity for depth, Curry specialised in surfaces that glittered with intelligence. He made excess look like restraint and restraint look like a missed opportunity. The world is a shade less interesting without him, and considerably less well dressed.