Tim Curry, the British actor whose corseted, fishnet-clad Dr. Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” became a permanent fixture of film history, died on August 25, 2026, at 80. He died peacefully at his home in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Sean Katz confirmed to USA TODAY.

Katz issued the announcement for Marcia Hurwitz, Curry’s longtime manager and friend. “Though widely known for his inimitable, flamboyant characters and colorful stage performances, his greatest legacies to those who knew him were his curious, expansive mind and generous, gentle heart, both of which remained open and filled with anticipation until his final breath,” the statement said. No cause of death was disclosed.

Officers were called at 11:20 p.m. on August 25 to a death investigation involving a man in his 80s at a Los Angeles address, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Crews had gone to a medical emergency at that same address at 10:42 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department said, and an adult man was pronounced dead there.

A major stroke in 2012 left Curry partially paralyzed, and his health had been poor ever since. Addressing a crowd at a 2025 event held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, he said walking was still beyond him, that his left leg continued to give him real trouble and that there would be no singing or dancing from him.

From “Hair” to Frank-N-Furter

He was born on April 19, 1946, in Grappenhall, Cheshire, England; Variety’s obituary gave 1948, but an age of 80 at his death confirms 1946. His full name was Timothy James Curry. His mother was a school secretary, and his father, a Methodist chaplain serving in the Royal Navy, had a stroke when Curry was 11 and later died of pneumonia. Drama studies at the University of Birmingham led straight to his first professional job: the original 1968 West End staging of the rock musical “Hair.”

Castmate Richard O’Brien became a friend during that engagement, and in 1973 he handed Curry the role of Frank-N-Furter in a musical he was then writing. The character debuted that year in the tiny upstairs space at London’s Royal Court Theatre, where a figure originally conceived as a German scientist in a lab coat became, in Curry’s hands, a creation in corset and fishnet stockings who spoke like the queen.

Out of the gate, Fox’s 1975 film version — featuring a young Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick — was a flop. What followed was a midnight-screening tradition of costumes, props and shouted callbacks stretching more than five decades; no other movie has ever had a longer continuous theatrical run. The score gave audiences “The Time Warp,” “Science Fiction/Double Feature,” “Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch Me” and Curry’s bawdy showstopper, “Sweet Transvestite.”

Asked how he would like to be remembered, Curry pointed to the film in the fall of 2025: “It’s given a lot of people permission to be themselves,” he told USA TODAY.

The Clown That Scared a Generation

Pennywise the Clown terrified a mass audience in 1990, when Curry took the part in the two-part, four-hour ABC miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel “It,” watched in more than 37 million households. Working with a low, rasping growl and a New York accent, he turned every assumption about children’s entertainers upside down. Director Tommy Lee Wallace said in 2017 that his job was largely to hand Curry the stage and then keep out of the way, likening the actor’s off-the-cuff improvising to that of Robin Williams.

Three Tony Nods and a Memoir

Broadway brought him three Tony nominations for best actor: for creating the role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1981 Broadway staging of “Amadeus,” a contest he lost to castmate Ian McKellen, who played Antonio Salieri; for the alcoholic actor Alan Swann in the 1993 musical “My Favorite Year”; and for King Arthur in Monty Python’s “Spamalot” in 2005. He had signed on for that last part when the production opened in Chicago in 2004 and stuck with it for three years, including a London engagement.

Curry won a single Daytime Emmy, in 1991, and drew three Tony nominations and two Laurence Olivier nominations without converting either — a record several obituaries overstated in the days after his death.

On screen his range was startling. He played the swindler Rooster Hannigan opposite Carol Burnett’s Miss Hannigan and Aileen Quinn in the title role of 1982’s “Annie,” then the unflappable butler Wadsworth in 1985’s “Clue,” with Madeline Kahn and Christopher Lloyd. That same year he was the horned, tomato-red Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott’s “Legend” with Tom Cruise. Later came Long John Silver in 1996’s “Muppet Treasure Island,” a suspicious Plaza Hotel concierge in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” and Gomez Addams in 1998’s “Addams Family Reunion.” His credits also take in “The Hunt for Red October,” “Kinsey,” “The Three Musketeers,” “Scary Movie 2,” the 1995 thriller “Congo,” “Oliver Twist,” and “Will & Grace.” His own favorites were “Clue” and 1991’s “Oscar,” the Sylvester Stallone screwball comedy in which he played dialectician Dr. Thornton Poole opposite Marisa Tomei. After years away, he returned in the horror film “Stream,” which reached theaters in August 2024.

That voice sustained a career of its own. Between the late 1970s and the early ’80s he put out three albums that mixed original rock songs with covers, among them Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell numbers, and a Grammy nomination followed his audiobook narration of Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Younger audiences turned him into a meme through his bombastic Soviet Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in the 2008 video game “Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3,” with one clip surpassing 10 million views on YouTube. Curry never married and had no children; in his memoir, “Vagabond,” which he promoted on “CBS Sunday Morning” in October 2025, he wrote that he had loved and been loved.

Tributes From Stage and Screen

Burnett shared a clip of Curry playing her smarmy brother in “Annie” alongside co-star Bernadette Peters, writing on social media that “nobody could play lovable villains better than he could.” Welsh actor Luke Evans, who played Frank-N-Furter in the current Broadway revival, called Curry a bright, fierce flame and wrote that being compared to him ranked among the greatest compliments he had received. Evans went back on stage on August 26 with Paul Soileau, who plays the role now, and Jake Shears, who takes it over in September, and the three performed “I’m Going Home” in Curry’s memory. In a curtain speech, Soileau traced the character back to its source: “If you trace it all back 53 years ago, there’s one home and one vessel that Frank-N-Furter would actually call home, and it’s Tim Curry.” Fans also noted a coincidence: singer Dolly Parton died the same day, and both were 80.