From Pennywise to Gardener: The Side of Tim Curry Nobody Knew

There are moments that stop a city in its tracks, >> [music] >> and yesterday Hollywood lost one of its most singular voices. Tim Curry, the legendary British actor and singer best known for his iconic performances in cult classics like [music] The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the original screen adaptation of Stephen King's It has died. He was 80. His long-time manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz confirmed that Curry died peacefully [music] at his Toluca Lake home in Los Angeles. A cause of death was not immediately disclosed, though his final years were marked by the lasting effects [music] of a major stroke he suffered in 2012. A stroke that left him wheelchair bound and unable to walk with complete paralysis on his left side. And yet, even in those [music] difficult years, he never stopped working, never stopped performing, never [music] stopped being Tim Curry. Just last September he appeared at a special screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show telling the audience, "I still can't walk, which is why I'm in this silly chair that's very limiting." But then, in the same breath, he laughed. [music] That was Tim Curry. Even at the end, he refused to be anything less than himself. Variety. "Throughout his life, he refused to be boxed in or confined to others' expectations." [music] His announcement read. "Across five decades, he moved fluidly between comedy, horror, [music] drama, and music, delighting himself and his legion of fans with his countless dynamic personas. He played Dr. Frank-N-Furter, he played Pennywise, he played Wadsworth, Long John Silver, Rooster Hannigan, and King Arthur. He was, without question, one of the most theatrical, most fearless, [music] and most genuinely irreplaceable personalities this industry has ever [music] produced, and he did it all from some of the most extraordinary homes Los Angeles has ever seen. Today, we are honoring the life and legacy of Tim Curry, not just through his performances, but through the places he called home. Because here is something most people never knew about this man. After moving to Los Angeles, Curry became known for buying and renovating homes in the city, and also for his deep love of gardening, a passion inspired by his late father. >> [music] >> He was, in every sense of the word, a man of extraordinary taste. And the homes he chose told you everything about who he truly was. To understand why Tim Curry chose the homes he did, you have to go back to where he came from. He was born on April 19th, 1946 in rural Grappenhall, Cheshire, England. >> [music] >> Following his [snorts] father's death in 1958, the family moved to South London. He was 12 years old. He was already learning at a young age that life moves, that places are impermanent, and that what you carry inside you is the only constant. He developed into a talented boy soprano. His father died of pneumonia in 1958 when Curry was 12 years old. The family moved to South London where he attended boarding school before attending the prestigious Kingswood School in Bath. He went on to study at the University of Birmingham, graduated with a combined degree in English and drama, and in 1968 took his first professional role in the original London cast of Hair, where he would meet the man who changed his life forever, Richard O'Brien, who was writing a musical send-up of classic creature features that he would eventually call The Rocky Horror Show. >> [music] >> The rest, as they say, is mythology. After moving to Los Angeles in 1988, Curry restored a 1920s mansion in the Los Feliz neighborhood, finding a new passion for home renovation and gardening [music] at the same time his Hollywood career took serious flight. But the story of how he found that house is unlike almost any other celebrity real estate story you have ever heard. In a 1998 Architectural Digest feature, Curry opened the doors to his historic 1922 Spanish Colonial Revival home and revealed the unusual story of how he came to own it. The house [music] had once been scheduled for demolition and another potential buyer had recently backed out. None of that stopped Curry from deciding almost immediately when he saw the property. Amused by Los Angeles architectural dreamscape, Curry went with his friend and fellow actress Annie [music] Potts to look at a property that had just come on the market. One look was enough. He knew. The property in question was 2666 Aberdeen Avenue, one of the very first homes built in the rolling hills above Los Feliz, just below Griffith [music] Park, designed in 1922 by celebrated architect Stiles O. Clements, the [music] same man who designed the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. It was a 1922 Spanish Colonial Revival estate sitting on nearly 1 and 1/2 acres of terraced grounds and it had already made its Architectural Digest debut just 2 years after construction. Tim [snorts] Curry purchased the property in 1993 and lived there until 2000. >> [music] >> And what he did with it in those 7 years was nothing short of extraordinary. >> [music] >> The 1998 Architectural Digest feature documented Tim Curry's meticulous restoration of the property's original details, exposed wood beam ceilings, hand-painted surfaces, stained glass windows, iridescent copper, and vintage tile. He didn't renovate the house, he revived it. >> [music] >> He treated it the way he treated every role he ever played with complete commitment, with deep research, and with a theatrical instinct for what makes a space feel alive. Tim Curry once told Architectural Digest, "I feel most comfortable in a house of many layers." >> [music] >> Standing inside 2666 Aberdeen Avenue, you understood exactly [music] what he meant. The checkerboard entry floor, the Spanish archways, the [music] century-old gardens climbing the terraced hillside behind the house. On a warm Los Angeles evening, you could hear the music drifting down from the Greek Theatre just up the hill. This was not a celebrity mansion. This was a sanctuary designed, as Curry himself put it, [music] for the life he wished to pursue. "It's rather like designing a set for the life you wish to pursue," Curry told Architectural Digest. That one line tells you everything you need to know about Tim Curry's relationship with home. He was always building a world, always setting a stage. Away from the cameras, away from the scripts, Tim Curry had a passion that almost nobody in the general public fully appreciated. Architectural Digest described Curry as an avid horticulturist who worked not only on his own gardens, but also on those of friends. Among [music] them, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. Curry jokingly attributed his love of gardening to his English roots. "I think if you're English, a trowel appears in your hand when you're 30, like a prosthetic device," he said. Let that land for a moment. >> [music] >> Tim Curry, Pennywise, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, spent his private hours in Los Angeles tending gardens and helping Freddie Mercury with his flowerbeds. That is the man behind the mask. >> [music] >> Tender, curious, rooted in something deeply English, even while standing on a Californian hillside above Los Feliz. Here is where the Tim Curry real estate story becomes genuinely extraordinary. >> [music] >> Three of his former estates went on to become the homes of other massive celebrities. The Aberdeen Avenue home he sold eventually passed through the hands of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, then to Jim Parsons, and then to Aaron Paul, who called it a home with a deep soul. Every [snorts] owner who followed Tim Curry into that house spoke about it in reverent terms, as though what he had left behind in those walls wasn't just a renovation, but something harder to name. He sold another house in 2005 to Christina Ricci for $1,695,000. Another home he once owned became Colin Farrell's Los Angeles residence. And then there was the Los Feliz estate at [music] 4724 Cromwell Avenue, purchased from Frasier star David Hyde Pierce in 2006, paying $2 million for the four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 3,365 square-foot home. >> [music] >> Under Curry's ownership, the 1920s era home underwent an extensive restoration that brought it into the modern century while keeping the period details and charm of the private home that sits on park-like grounds. Tim Curry didn't just live in houses, he left them better than he found them >> [music] >> every single time. Toluca Lake, the neighborhood where Tim Curry drew his last breath, is one of the most quietly distinguished corners of the San Fernando Valley, a refined enclave close to the studios, tree-lined, private, [music] and long beloved by the Hollywood establishment. His publicist confirmed he died peacefully at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles. It was the home he had chosen in his later years. After the stroke, after the wheelchair, after the surgery, the place where the world's most theatrical [music] man chose to be in the end, simply quiet. He had found a home. He had always found a home. That was the through line of Tim Curry's life from the tenement in South London after his father died to the hillside mansions of Los Feliz [music] to the garden quiet of Toluca Lake. He was always, in every room he entered, building a world worthy of the life he imagined. >> [music] >> Tim Curry once said he tried, above all else, to protect certain parts of his real-life story from the public. He told an interviewer it was critical for him to not encourage an identity. And yet the homes he chose, the gardens he grew, the walls he restored by hand, they told the story anyway. >> [music] >> The story of an Englishman who fell in love with Los Angeles, who treated every house like a stage and every garden like a script, who left behind not just performances but places, [music] properties that outlasted his ownership and went on to shelter other stories, other lives. [music] He was, as his long-time manager said, someone who had reached an age he didn't necessarily expect to see, but he wasn't afraid. "I try to avoid it," >> [music] >> he said of death, "as I think we all do, but I suspect that in the end I will welcome it." He was Tim Curry. >> [music] >> He welcomed everything. Every role, every house, every garden with full commitment and complete originality. There will not be another one. Rest well, sir. If this tribute moved you, please subscribe to Famous Entertainment and ring the notification bell. >> [music] >> Leave your memories of Tim Curry in the comments below. Which role did you find him for you? And which of his remarkable homes do you think best [music] reflected the man he truly was?