Timothy James Curry was born on the 19th of April 1946 to Jim Curry, a Methodist Naval Chaplain and his wife Maura ‘Pat’ Curry. His early life prepared him for the life of a travelling actor. Tim’s parents met in Malta during World War II and were married in Egypt, where their first child, Judith, was born. Tim himself was conceived in South Africa, born in Cheshire, and by the time he was six months old the family had moved to Hong Kong. The young Tim lived a peripatetic life until his father suffered a stroke and the family settled in Plymouth with his maternal grandfather close by, whose West Country accent Tim borrowed for his portrayal of Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. Tim was not born into a show business family by any stretch; his father’s ancestors were County Durham builders and his mother’s family were seafarers.
Tim’s father had an intellectual bent and wrote a thesis on ‘English Sea Chaplains in the Royal Navy, (1577-1684)’ gaining an MA from Bristol University in 1956. Following another stroke and a bout of pneumonia, Jim Curry died in 1958, during Tim’s 12th year. After his father’s death Tim gained a scholarship to Kingswood School, Bath, having previously attended its preparatory school at Prior’s Court from 1956. It was during his time at Prior’s Court he first started to act in school plays and this tradition continued during his time at Kingswood where he met Jonathan Lynn, who would go on to write Yes Minister and who would direct Tim in Clue years later.
Following Kingswood and a gap year spent in Europe with another classmate, future art critic Richard Cork, Tim attended Birmingham University to study Drama & English between 1965 and 1968. He often refers to the fact he didn’t attend classes much and merely acted in extra-curricular productions. He even claims one of his professors tried to stop him from taking his final exams because he had never met him before.
Tim’s first acting job after university was in the original London production of Hair in 1968. When asked if he had professional experience and an Equity card, Tim lied about both; by the time the producers found out the truth, they were sufficiently impressed with his talent and presence to sponsor him for his union membership. Tim says "I wanted to do the Sodomy, Fellatio... song but I ended up just jumping up and down at the back as part of the troupe. It was a very peculiar production. People just didn't turn up if they were a bit stoned or they thought they'd stay home. But I was a real trouper. I always showed up." Tim’s enthusiasm for the show didn’t last long, and he sought release from his eighteen-month contract before moving to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of After Haggarty in 1970. Tim also spent a season at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre as well as working in various West End shows and some small-scale television such as The Policeman & The Cook (1972) with Michael Crawford. He also appeared in several productions at the Royal Court Theatre, a connection that would lead to the breakout role that would change his life forever.
In the early 70s, Tim began to mix with the theatrical crowd in London and Ian McKellen recalls how ‘he used to come to parties I gave at Christmas and was always the little boy in the corner who was a slight strain to talk to because he never opened his mouth. He was very tentative and private and perhaps rather wry about the company’.
Quiet though he may have been at parties, Tim’s next major role would show the world a more flamboyant and boisterous side of his personality. In 1973, he was invited by Richard O’Brien, a fellow cast member from Hair (Tim in the West End cast and O’Brien in the touring cast), to audition for O’Brien’s new experimental musical The Rocky Horror Show, to be produced at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs. Tim’s audition song was Tutti Frutti. O’Brien initially had Jonathan Kramer (of Midnight Cowboy) in mind for the role of Frank-N-Furter, ‘but Tim came in to audition and poor Jonathan never had a chance.’ Rocky Horror was an enormous hit, transferring to several progressively larger venues while Tim was with the cast and attracting attention from celebrities ranging from Mick Jagger to Tennessee Williams.
The Rocky Horror Show took Tim to Los Angeles for the first time, where it enjoyed a successful run at The Roxy on Sunset Strip. Record mogul Lou Adler produced the LA show, followed by the movie version; The Rocky Horror Picture Show filmed in 1974. The film remains a cult phenomenon over forty five years later and has helped cement Tim’s status as a pop icon to generations of fans.
Upon completion of the film, the play took to the stage one final time with Tim at the helm. The Rocky Horror Show opened at the Belasco Theater in New York in 1975 and met a different fate on Broadway than it had in London and LA. It was panned by the critics - some of them the same critics who had raved about the LA production - and closed after only 45 performances.
Tim was devastated about his Broadway debut, and Rocky’s treatment at the hands of the New York critics was a turning point in his development as an artist: ‘I think that was really one of the most formative things that has ever happened to me. I just went home and took out a bottle of vodka for about a month, actually. I sent out for submarine sandwiches and drank and got hugely patched, and then started work again. And I think once you’ve had a really serious failure, nothing can ever be as bad as that again. So you might as well just go for it, because they can’t make you feel any worse than they did before.’
Tim’s first role after Rocky Horror was in Stephen Frears’s television production of Three Men in a Boat, in which Tim played author Jerome K. Jerome, alongside Monty Python’s Michael Palin. ‘I asked him [Frears] if he thought I could play that, and he said that after Frank-N-Furter I could play anything’.
Tim would not be away from Broadway for long. In 1975, the year of Rocky’s demise on the Great White Way, he was approached to play Dadaist Tristan Tzara in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties. After a run in the West End, the show transferred to Broadway and ran through 1976. One of Tim’s first stops back in New York was at the storied Algonquin Hotel. Just months before he had left the Algonquin with his tail between his legs, unable to pay his bill. The manager had told him, ‘don’t worry, you’ll be back. Pay me when you can.’ Tim recounts with glee that he indeed went back to the Algonquin…and paid his outstanding balance in $5 bills.
Tim’s career also continued to accelerate on TV and film. In 1976 he began to film the prestigious six-part television series The Life & Times of William Shakespeare portraying the Bard from a young man through to his death. He was in high-powered company for his first film after Rocky, The Shout with Alan Bates and John Hurt. Meanwhile, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was developing into a cult phenomenon in America, opening doors not just for Tim’s acting pursuits but also for his long-held wish to have a career as a recording artist.
"’I was a boy soprano,'’ Tim explains. ‘’I sang in church from the age of 6 or 7, which I guess started it really.'’ While at Birmingham, he was still considering a career as a vocalist: 'at the time I wasn't really sure whether I wanted to be an actor or a singer; so I talked my way into Hair and postponed the decision for another year or so’.
Tim had originally started working on a studio album with Lou Adler in 1976 but the album never came to fruition; Tim still craved a music career, and off the back of the Rocky Horror phenomenon brewing in the States he began to work with A&M Records, making three studio albums between 1978 and 1981. Bob Ezrin produced the first of these albums, Read My Lips: ‘As soon as I met Tim, I decided to produce him. He came walking into the studio, into another artist’s session, and acted as though it was his session. He projected a kind of instant charisma, very serious, very powerful, very determined. He’s polished on the surface, but beneath it there is a raw sinister power. He’s got plenty of balls’.
Although none of the albums were a commercial success, Tim had a minor hit with I Do The Rock from his 1979 album Fearless when it reached number 53 on the American Billboard Chart. Tim toured America and Germany in the late 1970s with a band including famed guitarist Dick Wagner.
While writing songs for his albums, Tim developed a friendship with playwright Peter Shaffer. He recounts going to Shaffer’s house for Sunday lunch, and playing for him the new songs he was in the process of composing. A friend tipped off Tim that Shaffer was writing ‘a wonderful part’ for him. Tim’s response was to say ‘it will go to someone else.’
The role of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart did indeed go to someone else, at least at first. But when it came time for Amadeus to transfer to Broadway, it was Tim in the title role, working for the first time with Ian McKellen, who was playing the role of Salieri. Shaffer made extensive revisions in the play for its US run, and during rehearsals the two actors were dealing with new lines and new material every afternoon, and then putting it on its feet that night in the theatre. The result of this creative collaboration was a smash hit show, and Tony nominations for both Tim and McKellen. Tim lost out on the Tony Award to his co-star McKellen but often refers to the production as the piece of work he is proudest of.
While performing as Mozart in the evenings, Tim was busy recording his third and final album, Simplicity, in the daytime. He was also busy building an American movie career working on films such as the ill-fated Times Square and John Huston’s big screen adaptation of the musical Annie.
By the early eighties, it was clear that Tim Curry was not fated to be a rock star. ‘He enjoys telling how, whenever Sting was asked what made him imagine he could act in movies, Sting replied: ”If Tim Curry can make rock tours, I don't see why not!“ There's a CD entitled The Best of Tim Curry. ”They couldn't call it the Greatest Hits,“ he says, ”Because there weren't any’’.
But the end of Tim’s career as a rock god didn’t mean his days of musical glamour were finished. In 1982 he returned to the London stage in Joe Papp’s pop revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance as a sexed-up version of the Pirate King, a role originated by Kevin Kline in New York. The role was vocally demanding and at the high end of his vocal range, and Tim admits it was the first time in his life he was required to take formal singing lessons. Swashbuckling through the performance in an unbuttoned shirt and thigh-high boots, Tim gained rave reviews for his performance and won The Royal Variety Club award for ‘Stage Actor Of The Year’. His return to the UK also saw several television appearances including Blue Money, a comedy written specifically for Tim as a vehicle to showcase his mimicry and singing skills.
It was at this time that Tim also began what would become a lifelong exploration of villainous roles, appearing as Bill Sikes in a television adaptation of Oliver Twist and, as a more subtle antagonist in the feature film The Ploughman’s Lunch (with Jonathan Pryce), a role which Tim claims as one of his favourites.
In 1983 he joined the National Theatre where he stayed until 1986, performing in a number of productions including The Rivals, Love For Love, Dalliance and as MacHeath in The Threepenny Opera. Tim had long wanted to play the role and was disappointed with the results, citing poor reviews‚ ‘I've got a pretty good relationship with the critics, thankfully. But there was this sort of period this particular year at the National which was, uh, not very successful. In particular, a production of Threepenny Opera where I played MacHeath, which I'd always wanted to do and was truly slaughtered for the first time in my life, and it was very, it was very difficult. Particularly at a place like the National, where if a production clearly doesn't work, they don't take it off’. In actual fact, the reviews of Tim’s work were largely rather good, though the critics felt the production itself fell short.
It was during this same time that Ridley Scott was looking for just the right actor to play the devilish character of Darkness in the fantasy film Legend. Scott thought of Tim Curry: ‘Darkness was a very difficult guy to cast because of his physical requirements and his grand dramatic, melodramatic, requirements; operatic capability all but opera short of singing; I always remembered The Rocky Horror Show and whilst it's nothing to do with this - that's a brave thing he did. Really brave.’ Cast opposite a very young Tom Cruise, Tim wore full prosthetic make-up to play the now-iconic character, including hooves and horns that increased his height by several feet and contact lenses that reduced his pupils to slits. By the time the makeup team were finished, Tim had very little left to work with but his voice, which nevertheless proved both seductive and memorable. Interviewing Tim years later on the hit American TV show The View, hostess Meredith Viera explained ‘you know what I think it is about you, I've thought about this - because I'm a big fan - I think it's that you're very seductive…if you were the devil - I would pay to go to hell. I really would.’ (Tim barked with laughter in response, and declared ‘that is going on my resume!’)
Demonstrating his almost dizzying range, Tim was cast shortly after as Wadsworth, the very proper English butler in Jonathan Lynn & John Landis’s movie Clue, which would become years later - to Tim’s bemusement - another cult classic. In 1986 Tim also appeared as The Grand Wizard in the TV movie The Worst Witch, a role often remembered as a pivotal performance for all the wrong reasons, mostly due to the now infamous ‘Anything Can Happen On Halloween’ music video, which featured an array of cheesy psychedelic special effects.
Despite these film appearances, Tim found his time at the National Theatre didn’t do much for his financial well-being, the pay at the National being substantially lower than on the West End. In an interview with Twiggy years later, Tim claimed that ‘the cupboard was bare’. He therefore agreed to appear in the US national tour of Me & My Girl (which he later referred to as the ‘get rich and get thin’ tour) as the central character Bill Snibson. He toured the United States throughout 1988 before doing an extended run at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. It was during this residency at the Pantages that two things occurred that would change Tim’s life and career. The first was that Tim decided to move to Los Angeles permanently after the run, as he wanted to focus on a movie career, and LA was ‘where they point cameras at you’.
The second happened quite by chance when he was approached by Hanna Barbera to voice The Serpent in a cartoon adaptation of The Creation. Tim found that he thoroughly enjoyed doing voiceover work, and went on to become one of the most well-known, prolific voiceover artists in the industry. He has voiced hundreds of cartoon characters, perhaps most notably Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys, and Captain Hook in Peter Pan And The Pirates for which he won an Emmy in 1991. He has also recorded a varied range of audiobooks including Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (for which he received a Grammy nomination in 2002), and many video games, including Gabriel Knight, Frankenstein: Through The Eyes of A Monster, and most recently Red Alert 3, Dragon Age: Origins, & Brutal Legend.
While some actors find voicework a poor second to stage work, Tim feels differently about it: ‘Growing up in England I was a child of what today would be considered austere surroundings. It was all radio; we had no TV until I was about 10. I believe, as a result, that I became a good reader of imagination, which is an enormous part of recording work…. I find there is something very intimate about being the voice in someone’s ear when they’re driving. I’ve received letters from people who’ve said, “You took me all the way to Tuscaloosa.” It’s you, the author and your own imagination, and you’re trying to engage the listener’s imagination. It’s a creative, lovely thing to do’.
Tim’s move to Los Angeles allowed him to put down roots for the first time. One of his greatest off-screen pleasures was the restoration of a grand 1920s mansion in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, nestled under the Hollywood sign and overlooking the lights of the city. Tim bought the house in a dilapidated condition, found the original plans for the home and garden, and painstakingly restored it, adding personal touches along the way. The garden seems to have had particular meaning for him, as his father made a garden from scratch during the years of his illness. Reflecting on his own garden, Tim said ’I made two patios with benches. From one you can see the sun rise and from one you can watch the sun set. Often I just sit up there and see what I imagine for the next project. If I didn't have to work, I'd never leave. The 20th century has been very much about getting what you want now. Gardens are about making something terrific for those who come after’.
His Hollywood career underway, Tim appeared in six episodes of the hip television series Wiseguy (1989) as corrupt record producer Winston Newquay. His performance in the series’ story arc ‘Dead Dog Records’ is often regarded by fans as one of his best. Tim then returned to the stage between 1989 and 1990 playing William Hogarth in Nick Dear’s The Art Of Success for the Manhattan Theatre Club before finally focusing on his movie career in LA. In 1990 Tim won a small role alongside Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October, followed by a television adaptation of Stephen King’s IT as Pennywise, a terrifying killer clown, where he somewhat reluctantly returned to wearing prosthetic makeup for the role. Pennywise has been terrorizing generations of children ever since. Alongside these roles, Tim appeared as The Prosecutor in Rodger Waters’s concert The Wall: Live In Berlin which commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 1991 Tim took a brief hiatus from the shady and villainous roles he had begun to specialize in, to appear in the farce Oscar with Sylvester Stallone. The role of Dr. Thornton Poole, a shy and bumbling elocution coach hired to help the gangster Stallone clean up his English, remains one of his favourite parts. Tim quipped that Dr. Poole is a genuinely kind character that gets the girl in the end: ‘I usually kill the girl’. Unable to resist the lure of the stage, Tim appeared briefly with his good friend and Pass The Ammo (1988) co-star Annie Potts in Love Letters at the LA Theatre Club in 1991. He also continued his voiceover career and appeared in his first full-length animated feature film FernGully: The Last Rainforest in 1992.
Tim’s film roles were becoming steadily more prominent, and he soon found himself working with Macaulay Culkin in the popular movie sequel Home Alone 2: Lost In New York as the Plaza Hotel’s nosey and smarmy concierge. But the stage was a constant lure, and in late 1992 he decided to return to Broadway in the musical My Favorite Year as Alan Swann, an ageing alcoholic movie star who is given one last chance to revive his washed-up career on a television show. Bringing a distinctive edge and pathos to the role Peter O’Toole had originated on film, Tim gained his second Tony Award nomination for the role, but again did not win. By 1993, he was back at work in the movies, creating one of his most memorable villains in Walt Disney’s The Three Musketeers as the delightfully evil and seductive Cardinal Richelieu. In 1994 he appeared in The Shadow alongside Alec Baldwin and his Amadeus co-star Ian McKellen. On television he played a whole family in the Tales From The Crypt episode Death Of Some Salesmen. His portrayal of Ma, Pa and Winona Brackett earned him a Primetime Emmy award nomination in 1994.
In 1995, Tim had the bad luck to appear in the feature film Congo, which became known as a notorious flop. The following year, his fortunes improved and he landed the role of Long John Silver in the new Muppet movie, Muppet Treasure Island. Tim gained great critical acclaim for this magical performance and director Brian Henson applauded Tim’s ability to stand his own amongst the screen-grabbing Muppet crew. Tim commented, ‘what's extraordinary is that after the first day or two, you don't think of them as Muppets. You think of them as characters - as fellow actors’. He performed his two songs Sailing For Adventure and Professional Pirate live on set and impressed Henson so much that he insisted all performers in his films should do the same from then on. Tim thoroughly enjoyed the experience: ‘It was one of the happiest sets I've ever been on. There's a conspicuous lack of ego among the Muppets’.
Tim appeared in several films through 1996 and 1997, including Lover’s Knot and McHale’s Navy, which were filmed alongside his animation work on the cult cartoon Duckman and television guest parts in Lexx and a TV adaptation of Titanic. In 1997 Tim once again worked with his good friend Annie Potts on the ABC sitcom Over The Top. Tim worked as a producer on the series and did several large-scale interviews to promote the series on shows such as The View, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, and Arthel & Fred. Tim was the star of the show as washed-up actor Simon Ferguson, the ex-husband of Annie Potts’ hotel-owning Hadley. Simon is sacked from daytime soap ‘Days To Remember’ and shows up at his ex-wife’s hotel, hoping for a free place to stay, despite the fact their marriage of just three days ended twenty years before. The show also featured a young Steve Carell as a wacky European chef and guest stars such as John Ritter. Unfortunately only three episodes of the eleven filmed were ever shown on American television due to low ratings and alleged conflicts between network bosses.
After the lack of success for Over The Top, Tim went on to do several television and straight-to-video movies such as Doom Runners (1998) and Addams Family Reunion (1998) with Tim as Gomez and Daryl Hannah as Morticia. The television ‘mockumentary’ Jackie’s Back was filmed in 1999 alongside a great deal of voiceover work in animation, audiobooks and video games before Tim finally got back into mainstream work during 2000.
Tim appeared in the widely anticipated movie adaptation of Charlie’s Angels in 2000 as villain Roger Corwin. The same year, he also appeared in two small-scale independent films Four Dogs Playing Poker and the ‘Brit flick’ Sorted.
Shifting gears yet again, Tim returned to the Broadway stage in 2001, playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol for the Theater at Madison Square Garden. This was Tim’s first theatre performance for almost a decade, and the transition back to the stage took some getting used to. Tim recalls, ‘the theatre there has 5,000 seats, and I was dreading it. But I remember going out on stage at the beginning of the technical rehearsals and thinking, “You idiot, this is what you do”’. During this time, Tim also took a leading role in the campaign to attract people to New York and the theatre after the 9/11 attacks.
Following his performance as Scrooge, Tim returned to film and television work appearing in Attila (2001), Scary Movie 2 (2001), Wolf Girl (2001), and The Scoundrel’s Wife (2002). In 2001 he provided the voice of Nigel Thornberry in the Nickelodeon cartoon The Wild Thornberrys which remains one of his most popular animation voiceovers to this day.
In 2002 he landed the role of Mr. French in a remake of the popular sitcom Family Affair. After the failure of Over The Top, this series marked a chance for Tim to return to mainstream American television and prove himself to the public once more. Unfortunately, despite a well-crafted and subtle performance by Tim, this show was also slated by the critics, and, once again, Tim did not gain the success he clearly craved.
Animation feature films and cartoon voiceovers followed alongside two television guest star appearances in sitcoms Monk and Will & Grace and the feature film Kinsey during 2004. The same year, Tim was approached by his friend and ex-Monty Python star Eric Idle and asked to attend a read-through for a new musical written by Idle based on the 1975 film Monty Python & The Holy Grail, to be named Spamalot. Tim would be playing the role made famous by Graham Chapman, King Arthur, in this Broadway-bound musical comedy spoof. The reading went well, and, to quote Tim, ‘the whole thing went like gangbusters and the show was to go ahead.’ Spamalot was performed in Chicago for a preview period to be followed by a run on Broadway. Tim secured the role of King Arthur in a cast that included Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce and Sara Ramirez as The Lady Of The Lake. He performed in the show between 2004 and 2007 appearing in the Chicago, Broadway and London productions and gaining his third Tony Award nomination; yet again losing out on the gong as he saw it awarded to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ Norbert LeoButz.
Despite the disappointment over the Tony Award, Spamalot did something for Tim’s career that no show in 20 years had done - it brought him back to the London stage. Tim had been looking for a vehicle for his return, and he was thrilled to be back, and particularly thrilled to be playing very English comedy with other English actors: ‘I'm loving being back among English actors, who just do it and they do it with an absolutely idiosyncratic sense of humour’. He performed in London for a limited four-month run and then handed King Arthur’s crown over to Simon Russell Beale. Mike Nichols, the show’s director, told Tim he was welcome to open the show anywhere it played, an offer that touched Tim deeply. In the end, though, his homecoming to London was short lived, and Tim returned to his adoptive home: ‘I was going to go to Las Vegas and open Spamalot there, but I decided that I was just too physically exhausted. I plan to go home to Los Angeles and have a bit of a life for a moment. I’ve been doing Spamalot for a very long time, and it’s time to go home’.
During his time in Spamalot, Tim was plagued by an old foot injury for which he’d had surgery many years before. He continued to perform through the pain (and has since had more surgery to correct the problem). Reflecting on the passage of time and his role in Spamalot, Tim has said, ‘I...thought that I only had one more musical in me. They are hugely physically demanding, especially as you get older’. One evening in 2006, autograph-seekers stopped Tim as he was getting into his car after dinner in a Los Angeles restaurant, and one asked about the cast he was wearing on his foot. Tim’s comment was ‘ancient musicals’. After his return home and having had a bit of a life, Tim turned his attention once again to film and television. He appeared in the popular sitcom Psych in 2007 as a Simon Cowell-type talent judge called Nigel St. Nigel.
He appeared alongside Patrick Swayze in 2007’s Christmas In Wonderland and returned to British television for the first time in several years in Terry Pratchett’s The Colour Of Magic in 2008. In 2007, Tim returned briefly to the stage in a three-day run of Eric Idle’s What About Dick in Los Angeles. In 200 he appeared as Dodo in a Syfy Channel adaptation of Alice In Wonderland entitled Alice. This was quickly followed by yet more British television during Christmas of 2009 where viewers saw Tim in an episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot titled Appointment With Death at 9pm on Christmas Day. Tim appeared as an eccentric Italian magician on the BBC’s ever-popular television series Return to Cranford with Judi Dench the very next day. (In an interview about the series, Dame Judi confided, ‘I've always had a huge crush on Tim Curry since I saw him in Amadeus’.)
In 2010 Tim guest-starred as serial killer Billy Flynn on CBS’s Criminal Minds. He appeared in the final episode of season five in May 2010 and the first episode of season six in September 2010. In October 2010 Tim played Dr Monro in the John Landis film Burke and Hare. In May 2011 Tim was set to return to the UK stage as The Player in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead directed by Trevor Nunn. Unfortunately after only a few days in the production at Chichester Festival Theatre, Tim was forced to pull out of the play due to ill health. Tim's understudy, Chris Andrew Mellon, took on the role of The Player for the remainder of the Chichester run and in the London run at The Theatre Royal Haymarket. Tim’s illness was particularly unfortunate given the tremendous promise of his performance. One critic remarked that ‘his delivery of the “actors are the opposite of people” speech was so arresting and passionate that the silence in the theatre reached a whole new level, as the audience became ‘absorbed in his every word’. Tim returned to the stage in April 2012 when he appeared in a re-write of Eric Idle's What About Dick at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The show had a limited four-night run, with a remarkable cast that also included Eddie Izzard, Billy Connolly, Tracey Ullman and Russell Brand.
In July of 2012, Tim suffered a major stroke. His family and friends closed ranks around him as he began his long road to recovery, and managed the near-miracle of keeping the news secret until the following May, when somehow the Daily Mail learned about it. In response to the flood of press queries, his long-time agent Marcia Hurwitz confirmed that 'Tim is doing great. He absolutely can speak and is recovering at this time and in great humour' She also added 'He has been going to physical therapy doing very well and still has his great sense of humour. He thanks everyone for sending good wishes.' Tim has returned to work following his stroke and has recorded several voice projects including Over The Garden Wall for Cartoon Network. In 2016 Tim appeared in the FOX Television Event 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do The Time Warp Again' as the Criminologist and he reprised his role of Frank N Furter in a 2020 benefit reading of ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ in aid of the Wisconsin Democrats.
Since 2016 Tim has been appearing at Conventions to meet his fans and pose for photos and he continues to take part in private autograph signings each month. Tim has traveled extensively across the USA and Canada to make special guest appearances at large scale events such as Comic Con, MegaCon, GalaxyCon and Fan eXpo. In 2019 Tim helped launch the online platform ‘Fanmio’ and took part in an exclusive interview ‘Ask Tim’ and a virtual meet & greet experience for fans. In 2021 Tim made a unique appearance at Manchester’s ‘For The Love Of Horror’ for his first ever convention appearance in the UK. He continues to tour the convention circuit regularly and has appearances scheduled throughout 2022. Fans can also speak to Tim virtually via GalaxyCon’s online platform, alongside private calls, videos and shoutouts which can be purchased in our store. Tim regularly and exclusively signs with Lance Kirkland's professional autograph company OC Celebrity Marketing and both pre-signed, personalized and send-in options are available in our store.
He has also appeared at cabaret evenings in LA where he has taken to the stage to sing classic songs and original self penned material. Most recently Tim appeared at Rockwell Table & Stage’s ‘An Evening of Classic Broadway’ in 2017 where he shared the stage with his good friend and Rocky Horror (Roxy & Broadway) castmate Jamie Donnelly.
He continues to attend physical and speech therapy in his continued recovery. Tim currently lives in Los Angeles. He has never been married and has no children. Tim is an avid reader, painter, and a keen gardener; he created a beautiful garden from scratch in his previous residence in Los Feliz, LA, which was featured in several magazines alongside his interior design skills. In addition to his performance career, Tim is known to enjoy property development and has developed several beautiful homes around Los Angeles.
Copyright SW and L. Brown 2022.