Under the Covers with Tim Curry(‘s Vagabond)

When I found out Tim Curry was writing a memoir, I was ecstatic. As a noted Tim Curry lover, major book nerd, and big fan of celebrity gossip, I hit “preorder” so hard I nearly broke my finger. When the book finally arrived, I had to force myself not to devour it immediately. It is compulsively readable with fairly short chapters and is distinctly in Curry’s dulcet-toned voice. It feels like he is speaking directly to you as you share a pot of very strong tea, even if you are just reading the words on the page. (I did find out he also narrates the audiobook, and if you think I’m not also buying *that* to have him read these words aloud to me, you know nothing.) I know you’re shivering with antci….¹

Don’t worry: I will not spoil the book as a whole, and I encourage you to read it if you are, like me, a Curryhead. Curryite? Currykin? Currmudgeon? What the hell does the fandom of Tim Curry fans call themselves? Apparently, there is no one name. Let’s brainstorm that together after you read the book.

Tim Curry is a notoriously private celebrity. As such, we do not get a huge amount of personal, private-life information about him directly. He explicitly states in the opening chapter that he will not be talking about his romantic life at all, full stop, because it’s none of our business. But throughout the book, he makes mention of the myriad of experiences he’s had in his life, and he is all about exploring the contradictions we all contain. While he never comes out and says it, the implication (at least to me) is that he is some flavor of queer. At the very least, he is likely “open-minded as hell.”

Playing one of his most recognizable and well-known characters, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, was a gift for him on many levels. “Playing somebody like that wakes you up to new dimensions of human nature. I can’t imagine a better role to enable me to embrace my contradictions and see them through. I learned not to limit myself—artistically, professionally, sexually, or mentally.”² It’s a major theme of his life, exploring these contradictions on stage and screen, and thereby allowing us to explore them as well. Maybe that’s why he has become such a beloved pop-culture figure.

I will admit that the book is a bit uneven in the information we get from behind the scenes of his long and storied career. Most (though certainly not all) of what he discusses at length are his lesser-known plays, TV shows, and movies, which was kind of wonderful. Sure, we get two chapters about Rocky Horror and his early acting days, but the chapter about Clue is barely six pages.³ There is a full chapter about his time touring the US in a revival of the musical Me and My Girl, which I’d never heard about. And, yes, there are chapters that cover many-year spans in just a few pages.

It is interesting to hear from him directly which roles/characters stuck with him over the years, versus what audiences and fans mention to him the most. Spoiler alert: Generally, they don’t line up. We also get a semi-juicy story involving Carly Simon, Truman Capote, and Andy Warhol at Studio 54, though I would love to know every single bit of what happened that night and have it tattooed on me for posterity.

The chapters I was most intrigued by were the ones about his early life and family, which he talks about fairly openly. Well, as much as an infamously private, famous, distinctly British actor can speak openly about a difficult topic, and family is clearly a difficult topic for him. His father, a minister, passed when Curry was young. Because his father was a minister, they’d lived all over England when Curry was a wee babe, which informed his future roving vagabond ways. He was closer to his father than his mother, who sounds like she was a piece of work, to put it mildly. (To wit: Two separate studios burned down during projects he was involved in due to faulty wiring. His mother implied both were his fault because he was a smoker. Way to go, Mama Curry.) Feelings and memories were not discussed until far after the fact, if at all, especially concerning his father’s death from a stroke at the age of only forty-five. I’m willing to bet that stoicism and silence in the face of trauma also informed his tendency to roam, wander, and crave new challenges and new mediums to work in. His father’s charisma while ministering was also his original source of theater, and he learned how to command a room by watching his father on Sundays. Not the typical beginnings of a major actor and theater star!

He’s also very candid about some other, rougher parts of his life, like how much he relied on cocaine to get him through the 1980s while he was living in New York City and simultaneously recording albums, starring in musicals, and shooting films/TV shows. Yeah, I can see how cocaine would be appealing when you’re running yourself that ragged, and you’re also famous and can afford it. He also admits that he has struggled with alcohol over the years, but is much more conservative about his alcohol intake. He also, at one point, smoked two packs a day! Alright, maybe his mom had a slight point about his smoking, but she could have pointed it out in a less “I think you’re an accidental arsonist” kind of way.

My favorite part throughout is Tim Curry’s wit and charm, which ooze off the page, and comes through most when he’s talking about other people. Specifically, he is excellent at gossiping about people in a way that’s classy while also elegantly taking them down. (He’s great at doing this about himself as well, because British, but you can read those in the book.) And, he often follows up his initial unkind assessment of a person by acknowledging that they would eventually become great friends. Take, for instance, his first time meeting Mick and Bianca Jagger. Shortly after this anecdote, he acknowledges he became great friends with the Jaggers, “especially Bianca.” But first, he gives us this:

I was very shy with Mick, but he was pleasant enough with me. Bianca was always a piece of work. She had brought along a bag with ten different suntan lotions, which she proceeded to pull out one by one to show me … though I couldn’t have been less interested. We didn’t interact much after that. She did not appeal. But Mick wasn’t embarrassed by her, not at all.⁴

His thoughts on Andrew Lloyd Webber? “Andrew is an extremely clever man and has also had the very good sense to work with some extraordinary directors and producers. But I don’t have a great deal of feeling for his music—I prefer more personal tunes that are of our time and don’t strike a derivative tone.”⁵

FUCKING BURN, expertly done. Wow. 1000000/10, no notes.

What about Meat Loaf, with whom he did multiple versions of Rocky Horror? “[A] real force of nature, with no confidence problem whatsoever.”⁶ Margaret Thatcher? While working on a film called The Ploughman’s Lunch, which was meant to “address the mass media’s fixation on Margaret Thatcher.” “For one scene, we went to the Conservative Party Conference to shoot, and just by great chance were there on a day when we managed to get Thatcher live on film, simply by showing up. That was a huge stroke of luck. I say luck, but we all hated her.”⁷

My favorite takedown in the book, however, is his recounting of his time with Tom Cruise on the set of Legend. It’s not even particularly mean, and he cushions it gently with nice words before and after, but I just loved this (and as someone who recently rewatched Legend, I have to agree with this assessment):

Tim, baby girl: I know your life is much harder and you are much older with limited mobility after suffering your own stroke⁹, but I am going to need you to teach a class on how to be this classy and sassy at the same time. I love it. I could read a million pages of only Tim Curry expressing his feelings about the people he’s met throughout his life, and just his general feelings on people he doesn’t know, frankly. I’d gladly read it all. Maybe that can be the next book? Even if you’re not into celebrity gossip, if you are a Tim Curry fan, this is a memoir worth reading. Give yourself over to absolute literary pleasure.

1. PATION! ↩︎
2. Curry, Tim. Vagabond: A Memoir. Grand Central Publishing, 2025, pages 84-85. ↩︎
3. There is, apparently, an excellent documentary about Clue that I am guessing/hoping has way more of his thoughts. Also, he was very fond of Madeline Kahn (duh), and they originally shot a fourth ending to the movie, and I demand to see that footage NOW. ↩︎
4. Ibid, pages 77-78. ↩︎
5. Ibid, page 54. ↩︎
6. Ibid, page 91. ↩︎
7. Ibid, page 150. ↩︎
8. Ibid, pages 162-163. ↩︎
9. The last chapter and conclusion address this and it is so heartbreaking, even though he manages to describe everything with a relatively light tone, it’s still so sad to learn the details of his stroke and his daily life now. ↩︎