Tim Curry, Star of The Rocky Horror Show, Dies at 80
Tim Curry, the stage and screen performer who created the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in the original London production of The Rocky Horror Show, has died at the age of 80. He died on 26 August 2026 at his home in Los Angeles, according to The Independent and KSL. His cause of death had not been disclosed at the time of the announcement, though police sources were cited. Variety, which published the first obituary, reported that the cause was not immediately available.
Curry had been in ill health for some years. He suffered a severe stroke in 2012, at the age of 67, which left his left side paralysed, and had experienced further health issues since, according to Variety and The Guardian.
His professional theatrical career began in the West End ensemble of the musical Hair, as reported by What's On Stage. He then originated the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter — the flamboyant, corseted scientist at the centre of The Rocky Horror Show — in the initial London staging. He reprised that performance on Broadway and in the 1975 screen adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which became a durable midnight-movie phenomenon.
Curry's stage work extended well beyond Rocky Horror. He performed in Tom Stoppard's Travesties for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. On Broadway, he created the role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the original production of Amadeus, receiving a Tony nomination for the part. He earned Olivier nominations — the Olivier Awards being the UK's principal theatre honours — for playing the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance and King Arthur in Spamalot. He led Spamalot in New York as well as in the West End.
His screen credits were wide-ranging: Annie, Clue, Legend, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York among them. He appeared in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King's It, and he earned a Daytime Emmy Award for his voice work on Peter Pan and the Pirates. He also received the Actors Fund of America Artistic Achievement Award.
For audiences of several generations, Curry was the kind of performer who turned up in wildly different places — a horror host in fishnets one year, a puckish villain in a family film the next — and was always immediately, unmistakably himself. The breadth of his work, from subsidised theatre to Hollywood studio films, is rare in any career.
He is survived by his family. His mother died in 1999 at the age of 80, according to The Guardian.
