The manager of actor Tim Curry announced yesterday (Wednesday, August 27) that the star had died at the age of 80 at his home in Los Angeles.
Born in Cheshire on April 19, 1946, he was the son of a Royal Navy chaplain, growing up in Hong Kong and a series of British seaside towns before the family settled in Plymouth,
Initially he wanted to be a singer before choosing to concentrate on acting, graduating from the University of Birmingham with a degree in English and drama.
Starting out as a stage actor, his first role was in a production of Hair and he was nominated for Laurence Olivier Awards for playing the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance and King Arthur in Spamalot.
On Broadway he was a three-time Tony Award nominee for roles in Amadeus, My Favorite Year and, once again, Spamalot.
But it was his villainous screen roles that led to global fame - playing Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennywise the clown in It, Darkness in Legend and Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.
He was also an accomplished voice actor, bagging a Daytime Emmy Award for his performance as Captain Hook in Peter Pan & the Pirates, and narrated a host of audiobooks, including A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning for which he was Grammy nominated.
Here are 13 of the actor’s most memorable quotes.
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9. Tim Curry on...playing literary characters
"I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous." | Getty Images
10. Tim Curry on...playing Frank-N-Furter
"Any part that makes you world famous has got to be a blessing, hasn't it?" | Getty Images
11. Tim Curry on...Rocky Horror character Dr. Frank-N-Furter
"The thing about playing somebody like that is it wakes you up to all these possibilities. I mean the one thing I've been very concerned about is to not limit myself either, whether it's artistically, physically, sexually or mentally. He's been a great lesson to me, put it that way." | Getty Images
12. Tim Curry on...Rocky Horror
"I think one of the things it has done to audiences, particularly early in the game, and actually still now, is that it's been very kind of liberating sexually for them, and I guess it was very liberating for me too because it was a huge step to make. And certainly my agents were worried that it would kind of ruin my career and, of course, it hasn't. For me it was, I think, the most joyous time of my life. You know, I was still very young, it took me to Hollywood and to Broadway and into a kind of very peculiar immortality, and I'm very grateful for that." | Getty Images