Tim Curry Recalls Scaring the Young Actor Playing Georgie as Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT

Here’s something wonderfully ironic: Tim Curry didn’t like clowns.

That didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most terrifying clowns ever put on screen with his performance as Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT.

Curry’s take on the shape-shifting monster in the 1990 miniseries scared an entire generation, and apparently he was just as effective while filming it.

Before he passed away, Curry visited to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, and it was there he admitted that clowns have never exactly been his thing: “I don't like clowns. I never did.”

Still, Curry enjoyed playing Pennywise because the character gave him plenty of room to have fun with the performance. He said: “I like doing that show a lot because you have immense freedom really as a clown. Beep beep.”

That freedom helped make his Pennywise so horrifically unpredictable. Curry could be playful, funny, strange, and completely terrifying, sometimes shifting between those personalities in a matter of seconds.

One of his best stories from IT comes from filming the famous sewer scene with Georgie, played by Tony Dakota. Curry remembered the young actor becoming genuinely frightened during the scene.

He shared: “There was a scene where I was in a sewer. Hi, Georgie. The little boy Georgie, he stopped in the middle of the scene and said, ‘Mr. Curry, you're scaring me.’”

Curry immediately reassured him. “I said, ‘Well, I'm supposed to scare you, but I don't mean to harm you in any way.’”

It’s a sweet story considering how horrifying the finished scene became. Curry was doing his job a little too well, and Dakota’s reaction says a lot about just how effective that Pennywise performance was up close.

Curry also summed up the challenges of shooting scenes with young actors pretty simply. “It's hard working with kids.” The interviewer agreed, adding, “It is, and there were a lot of them.”

More than 35 years later, Curry’s Pennywise remains a horror icon. The makeup and costume certainly helped create the character, but the real creepiness came from Curry.

His voice, expressions, humor, and ability to switch from silly clown to murderous monster made Pennywise genuinely disturbing.

I remember being terrified of his Pennywise when I was a kid, but I was also mesmerized by him. I couldn’t look away! I loved that he was so damn scary!

The fact that Curry doesn’t even like clowns somehow makes the whole thing even better.