Tim Curry (1946)

 early life

Curry's father, James, was a Methodist chaplain in the Royal Navy, and his mother, Patricia, was a school secretary. Curry was born and raised in Warrington, Cheshire and attended Lymm High School until his father's death in 1958. Curry's family then moved to South London, but Curry himself went to boarding school and attended Kingswood School in Bath. As a child, he developed into a talented boy soprano . Deciding to concentrate on acting, Curry graduated from Birmingham University with a combined degree in English and drama.

 acting career

 Rocky Horror

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 Rocky Horror Show.
Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, but the character evolved into the sly, very upper-class English mad scientist and transvestite that carried over to the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and made Curry both a star and a cult figure. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles and New York until 1975.

For many years, Curry was reluctant to talk about Rocky Horror, feeling that it was a trend that had gone too far and had distracted attention away from his later roles. A VH1 Pop-Up Video Halloween special even quoted Curry as saying he grew so unnerved by the fan attention from this role he became "chubby and plain" in order to escape it. However, he has become much more open about discussing the show and now recognizes it as a "rite of passage" for many young people.

 Theatre

Shortly after the end of Rocky Horror Show on Broadway, Curry was back on Broadway with Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. Travesties was a Broadway hit which won two Tony Awards , as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award , and Curry's performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.

In 1981, Curry formed part of the original cast in the Broadway show Amadeus, playing the title character, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was nominated for his first Tony Award for this role, but lost out to his co-star Ian McKellen, who played Antonio Salieri. In 1982, Curry took the part of the Pirate King in the Drury Lane production of Joe Papp's version of The Pirates of Penzance opposite George Cole, earning enthusiastic reviews.

In the mid 1980s, Curry performed in The Rivals and in several plays with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, including The Threepenny Opera , Dalliance , and Love For Love . In 1987/1988, Curry did the national tour of Me and My Girl as the lead role of 'Bill Snibson', a role originated on Broadway by Robert Lindsay and followed by Jim Dale. In 1989/90, Tim Curry returned once again to the New York stage in The Art of Success. In 1993, Curry played Alan Swann in the Broadway musical version of My Favorite Year, earning him his second Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

In 2001, Curry starred as Scrooge in the musical version of A Christmas Carol that played at Madison Square Garden. In 2004, Curry began his role of King Arthur in Spamalot in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The show sold more than $1 million worth of tickets in its first 24 hours. It brought him a third Tony nomination, again for Best Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London's West End at the Palace Theatre, where Spamalot opened on 16 October 2006. His final performance came on 6 January 2007. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role and also won the Theatregoers' Choice Award (getting 39% of the votes cast by over 12,000 theatregoers) as Best Actor in a Musical.

From May to August 2011, Curry was scheduled to portray The Player in a Trevor Nunn stage production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Chichester Festival Theatre and then in London. He withdrew from the production on 27 May, citing ill health.