Tim Curry on Finding Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s Voice and Remembering THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Midnight-Screening Madness

Tim Curry created one of the most unforgettable characters in movie history as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the voice we all know almost sounded very different.

Before the actor passed away, he visited the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and looking through original material from the 1975 cult classic, Curry shared some great stories about developing Frank-N-Furter, getting his signature heels made, and experiencing the insanity surrounding the movie’s legendary midnight screenings firsthand.

When Curry was initially figuring out how he wanted to play Frank-N-Furter, he rehearsed the character with a German accent. It didn’t work. He said: “Originally, I rehearsed with a German accent. And it was a disaster.”

The voice that eventually clicked came from a completely unexpected place. Curry was riding a bus in London when he overheard an upper-class woman talking with a friend.

“It was a woman who rose in front of me on a bus in London. She was very sort of upper class and she was sort of chatting to her friend and she said, ‘Do you have a heist in town or a heist in the country?’ And I thought, ‘That's it.’”

That chance encounter helped Curry land on the wonderfully theatrical voice that became such a defining part of Frank-N-Furter.

Of course, the voice was only part of the transformation. Curry also remembered shopping for the heels he would wear as the character. The ones he initially found weren’t quite dramatic enough.

“I was in a shoe store and I tried on some heels, but they were too short. They were sort of like trainer heels, so they had them made for the movie. And they did insist on platforms.”

Those platforms eventually became part of one of cinema’s most recognizable costumes, but nobody involved could have predicted just how long Frank-N-Furter and The Rocky Horror Picture Show would stick around.

The movie famously developed a massive cult following through midnight screenings, where audiences turned watching the film into a full-blown interactive event. Fans dressed as the characters, shouted at the screen, acted out scenes, and transformed theaters into their own version of the floor show.

Curry had a front-row view of the phenomenon. He lived near New York’s Waverly Theatre, one of the locations closely associated with the film’s midnight-screening culture, and regularly saw fans arriving dressed as characters from the movie.

He shared: “I had a kind of mini loft behind the Waverly where they were showing it. The taxi would go past and I would see a line of people in costume. It was an extraordinary thing.”

Eventually, Curry decided to attend one of those screenings himself. His presence caused a little bit of chaos: “I did. When I sat down, sort of girls were coming up and and touching me and running away. They weren't quite sure that it was really me.”

Things got even funnier when the theater manager stepped in. Instead of recognizing the star of the movie playing on her screen, she apparently thought Curry was simply some guy creating trouble.

He explained: “The manager lady came in and said, ‘You are causing a disturbance and I don't even believe that you are who you say you are.’”

Curry had a wonderfully practical solution… “And I showed her my passport.”

Imagine having to prove you’re Tim Curry while sitting in a theater filled with people dressed as Tim Curry!

Half a century later, The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains a pop culture phenomenon. During his visit to the Margaret Herrick Library, Curry reflected on the surreal experience of seeing the movie reach its 50th anniversary.

He continued: “I know. Makes me feel very old, which of course I am, but it's a benchmark and transformative and inspirational. That's what thrills me most about the whole deal.”

For a movie that began as a strange, funny, sexually charged musical about a newly engaged couple stumbling into Frank-N-Furter’s castle, its longevity is pretty incredible. Generations of fans have continued discovering it, dressing up, attending screenings, and doing the Time Warp all over again.

Curry also offered a simple explanation for why playing characters like Frank-N-Furter has always been so much fun, saying: “I think writers have so much more fun writing villains than they do heroes. Heroes are boring, you know.”

Frank-N-Furter certainly isn’t boring. Fifty years later, neither is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.