A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of April
The Paw Print
April 19, 1946 is the birthdate of English actor and singer, Timothy James Curry.
Tim Curry’s first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical “Hair” in 1968, where he first met Richard O’Brien who went on to write Curry’s next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 play “The Rocky Horror Show”. Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, and later, with an American accent. However, he decided to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an English accent after deciding that the character should sound like Queen Elizabeth II.
Curry originally thought the character was merely a laboratory doctor dressed in a white lab coat. However, at the suggestion of director Jim Sharman, the character evolved into the diabolical mad scientist and transvestite with an upper-class Belgravia accent. That character carried over to the film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.
Shortly after the end of the “Rocky Horror Show” run on Broadway, Curry returned to the stage with Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. That play was a Broadway hit winning two Tony Awards: Best Performance by an Actor for John Wood, and Best Comedy for the play. “Travesties” also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, and Curry’s performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.
In 2004, Tim Curry began his role of King Arthur in Eric Idle’s “Spamalot” in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The play brought Curry a third Tony nomination, again for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London’s West End at the Palace Theater, where “Spamalot” opened on October 16, 2006. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and also won the Theatergoers’ Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical.
One of Tim Curry’s best-known television roles (and best-known roles overall) is as Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 horror miniseries “Steven King’s It”. Aside from one “Fangoria” interview in 1990, Curry never publicly acknowledged his involvement in “It” until an interview with Moviefone in 2015, where he called the role of Pennywise “a wonderful part”.