When David Bowie died, I was distraught. When Lynch died, I was devastated. Tim Curry has passed away at age 80, and it's another one of those losses that feels deeply personal... though that may just be because I can see his face or hear his voice when I think my way back through so many childhood memories. He was the king of genre. He was in everything. There was no role he couldn't take, remix, and turn into something that can only be described as iconic. And that even includes his voiceover work as Nigel Thornberry in the early 2000s Nickelodeon show The Wild Thornberrys – yes, that delightfully nasally voice paired with those ridiculous buck teeth made for one of the best animated TV dads of all time.
You might only know Curry as Dr. Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and you know what? That's okay. It was his first-ever film credit, though he had played the role multiple times before in the original stage show version. The world met Tim Curry in tall white heels, a garter, fishnets, with a painted-up face, singing in a sultry tone accompanied by some rather sexy sax – and whether you fainted on the spot like Susan Sarandon's Janet, or giggled profusely like Columbia and Magenta, he was here to stay.
