Tim Curry
Appearances
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And I did appear naked in it. I think, you know, it was a relief to her that I actually was wearing clothes of any kind in the Rocky Horror Show.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
She was happily unaware that part of the character, particularly Frank and Ferter, at his most gracious, was based on her. LAUGHTER Well, it was sort of her telephone voice, you know. Do you have any tattoos, Brad? My sister, when she saw it, fell on the floor and said, you know, does she know? And I said, no, she has absolutely no idea, and please don't tell her.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
She thought it was very, very amusing and brought all her friends. So she was a pretty hip lady, my mother, and she got it. I mean, you know, astonishingly, she loved it. She didn't like it as much as the Pirates of Penzance, which I did at Drury Lane. because the Queen Mother came to that, and that was the total seal of approval of my career.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I don't think she went to either, although Princess Margaret did come to Rocky Horror and had a wonderful time.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And Princess Diana actually requested to meet me because she was such a Rocky Horror fan.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I did actually meet Princess Diana. We, I was doing a production of love for love. Um, and it was taken to Vienna for British week and we played at the Berg theater and, um, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana were the guests of honor. And, um, Which was when she said that she very much wanted to meet me and so they sort of put me at the end of the receiving line.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And Prince Charles said, I think I've seen you on television. Haven't I seen you on television? I said, yes, sir, I'm sure you've seen me on television. Yes, I thought I'd seen you on television. But Diana said... you were in the Rocky Horror Show. And I said, yes, ma'am, I was. I was, but I'm sure that you haven't seen it. She said, oh, yes. It quite completed my education.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
She was a very funny girl and a very beautiful one and sort of a very wicked smile came with that sentence. She was great fun.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
That's so nice. I mean, it's sort of important for me because, you know, that first performance that sort of introduced me to everybody was so out there and so... I'll say, yeah. So kind of outrageous that, you know, I was a very quiet boy for a while, you know, just to make sure that people got it, that, you know, that wasn't necessarily who I was.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I got the part because I used to work a great deal at a theater in London called the Royal Court. And I guess they have a little theater upstairs which seats about 60 people and I did Brecht there and I did a sort of Rudyard Kipling show there and...
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And I guess the next show, I did a dreadful musical, a Marxist musical called Give the Gaffers Time to Love You, with a director who kept saying, Barry, the second act just simply isn't Marxist enough. And that, of course, never even opened to the critics. But the next show coming in was this... other musical called The Rocky Horror Show.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And originally I played Frankenfurter as though he was German. It was Dr. Frankenfurter and everything was very interesting and stupid. And then one day I heard a woman on a bus saying, do you have a heist in time or a heist in the country? And I thought, yes, she should sound like the queen. So... He should sound like the queen. But that's how it happened.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And it just started in this tiny theater, you know, and it just took off like a sort of rocket.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Oh, absolutely. And I mean, Richard's brilliance really was just, you know... It was really like reaching up a hand into the zeitgeist and just grabbing, you know, 50s horror movies, Sandra Dee comic books and 50s rock and roll and just hurling them all together.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
um with the you know some fishnet tights thrown in and the fishnet tights really you know came from a brilliant uh costume designer called sue blaine who i'd worked with before actually um in a a wonderful theater in scotland called the glasgow citizen theater where we did a production of the maids where i wore exactly that corset yeah the jean genet play i played solange and
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
We bought the corset for three pounds off a barrow in the market in Glasgow and wore it back to front.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Well, absolutely. And that was a fairly late development. I mean, I had no idea it was going to be like that.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
No, no, no, no. I thought I'd be in a white lab coat, you know.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
It's just what everybody wears in Transylvania. They just get over it, you know. It's truck driver drag. It's not about going boop, boop, a-doop. It's just what they happen to wear.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I think it's all of the above, actually. I mean, I think, first of all, they love the movie because it's daring. To pretty much everybody, it was daring at the time, less daring now. To them, it's daring. And it's also, I think, you know, there are several reasons why it's endured the way that it has. It's a kind of rite of passage now, I think.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And actually, first of all, it's a guaranteed weekend party to which you can go with or without a date and probably find one if you don't have one. And it's also, I think, a chance for people to to try on a few roles for size, you know, figure out, help them maybe figure out their own sexuality.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I mean, I think that's probably taking it a little deeper than it needs to go, but I think it has had a useful purpose in that way. And I've certainly had some very interesting and moving mail from people who have said, you know, Thanks for helping me figure out who I was. And that's very nice.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I did go. I went a couple of times. Oddly enough, it started happening at the Waverly Theater. In Manhattan, in the village. On 6th Avenue in the village. And ironically, I was living a block behind it on Jones Street.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
So I would see on my way home all these people. And, you know, I got to know about it rather quickly because I was a neighbor. Wow. And finally, I went to see it. And in fact, I had to sort of call the theater because, you know, you could never get in. And I said, you know, I'm in it and I'd really love to come and see it and get an Eiffel.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And the operator said, you're the third Tim Curry to call this week. Yeah. So finally I showed up and they sort of believed me and took me in and the word spread rather swiftly and people were sort of coming up and touching me and running away and giggling and it was a very, very peculiar experience.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
And then finally the usherette, I don't know what you call them really, that's what they call them in England, came and sort of dragged me out of my seat and announced that I was an imposter and threw me out of the theatre. Which is quite funny, really.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I actually had my passport on me and I pulled it out and I said, still think I'm an imposter? And she said, oh, Mr. Curry, I'm so sorry. Please come back in. And I said, I wouldn't dream of coming back in. And I saw it once on the strip in L.A. because I was doing a gig there with my band when I was making records and
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I took them up to the balcony to see it, and I remember my drummer coming out and saying, we don't have to dress up like that, do we? I said, no, you really don't, and I shan't be either. But it was odd. I mean, it's a very peculiar experience. I mean, the first person to actually shout back in the theater was David Bowie's first wife, Angie.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
I remember when Bowie came and he brought this huge entourage and she was with him. And when Richard O'Brien was about to kill me, she shouted, no, no, don't do it. And... So I guess she was one of the first people to sort of do that. And Mark Shaman, who's the sort of famous composer now, was one of the first to actually talk back in the Waverly. I think he began it here in New York.
Fresh Air
50 Years Of 'Rocky Horror'
Well, he, alas, was dead because he died when I was 12. So he wasn't even aware that I was an actor even. I think my mother... My mother, who, you know, is really like one of those sort of Monty Python ladies, you know. I can't imagine what's going on. You know, who always had a hat and... Since my first job in the theater was hair and, you know... And you were probably naked in that, right?