Tim Curry Reflects on 50 Years of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’: “Gives Anyone Permission to Behave as Badly as They Want”

Let’s do the Time Warp again — 50 years later.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show marks its milestone birthday this year, and in celebration the Academy Museum hosted a special screening of the new 4K remaster on Friday night, accompanied by a conversation with star Tim Curry. Also in the crowd at the event were Barry Bostwick (who played Brad Majors), Patricia Quinn (Magenta), Nell Campbell (Columbia) and producer Lou Adler, who all later joined Curry for photos.

Curry was met by a huge standing ovation as he took the stage — in front of a sold-out, costumed crowd, many holding onto prop kits that were sold in the lobby — joking, “I’m so excited by this and very honored by the Academy to do this presentation of our movie, which has dragged on for 50 years.”

He reflected on originating the role of Dr.Frank-N-Furter in the theater before making his film debut in Rocky Horror, teasing that Jim Sharman’s “directing technique was you weren’t allowed to bore him, and if he wasn’t bored, it stayed in.”

Curry noted that because of the character’s name, he originally “played him with a German accent, which evidently bored Jim;” he later found the correct accent on a bus in London, while listening to a chat between two upper-class women. “They wanted to sound like the queen and that seemed appropriate for Frank, really, who clearly thought he was the queen,” he added.

He also spoke about doing his own makeup when the show was on stage — “It was like a back-street hooker” — but when it came to the movie, professional makeup artist Pierre La Roche was brought in. Curry admitted, “I was horrified, actually, by his first attempt because I thought I was ready for the runway; it was just too polished for me. I wanted to just kind of smudge it all, but I didn’t dare, because he was a very formidable character.”

Looking back on 50 years of cult fandom, Curry said the movie being embraced particularly by the LGBTQ audience “means a lot because I think the message of the film — don’t dream it, be it — is very important. One of the things that the movie does, I think, is give anyone permission to behave as badly as they really want, in whatever way and with whom. And I’m proud of that.”

He added that the film “certainly singled me out from the pack for a moment” when it came to his post-Rocky Horror career, but “I don’t think it helped casting at all. I was really quite worried that it was going to be difficult, but it wasn’t.” The actor recalled when director Stephen Frears reached out to him about Three Men in a Boat,” and I said, ‘What makes you think that I can play a Victorian bank clerk?’ and he said, ‘If you can play Frank-N-Furter, you can play anything.’”

Curry closed out the evening by touching on his health, following a 2012 stroke that has left him in a wheelchair.

“I was having a massage at the time and I didn’t even actually notice anything, but the guy who was doing the massage said, ‘I’m worried about you, I want to call an ambulance.’ And he did, and I said, ‘That’s so silly,’” Curry said. “I still can’t walk, which is why I’m in this silly chair, and that’s very limiting. So I won’t be singing and I won’t be dancing very soon. I still have real problems with my left leg.” With his signature humor, he then let out a yawn and declared, “It’s awfully late, isn’t it? Why don’t we show the pic?”