Quotes

I'm not a conventional leading man at all and have no wish to be.

They couldn't call it ["The Best of Tim Curry" CD] "Greatest Hits" because there weren't any.

My specialty roles are Louche, Brio and Bravura.

[with reference to climbing volcanos while filming Congo (1995)] I smoke two packs of Marlboros a day, which doesn't go well with volcanos.

["The Making of Gabriel Knight", on rapidly evolving computer technology] Any new way to infiltrate myself into your minds.

["The Making of Gabriel Knight"] Gabriel Knight is VERY, very cool. And impossibly handsome. So of course, they picked me.

[to a crowd at a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention] It's so comforting to know that there are so many people in this world sicker than I am.

I want to establish a wide range and play all kinds of parts. It's that sort of acting career I really respect. I like to turn a sharp left from whatever I've done before because that keeps me awake. That's why I want to be an actor -- I don't want to play endless variations on one character.

[on his character Dr. Frank-N-Furter] The thing about playing somebody like that is it wakes you up to all these possibilities. I mean the one thing I've been very concerned about is to not limit myself either, whether it's artistically, physically, sexually or mentally. He's been a great lesson to me, put it that way.

[on The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)] It is parody but I play it and think of it as a kind of grisly reality. Frank-N-Furter, as a variation on Frankenstein, is obsessed with image and the way that things look, but I see him and play him as a grisly, real freak.

[on how The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) has left an impact] I think one of the things it has done to audiences, particularly early in the game, and actually still now, is that it's been very kind of liberating sexually for them, and I guess it was very liberating for me too because it was a huge step to make. And certainly my agents were worried that it would kind of ruin my career and, of course, it hasn't. For me it was, I think, the most joyous time of my life. You know, I was still very young, it took me to Hollywood and to Broadway and into a kind of very peculiar immortality, and I'm very grateful for that.

Maintaining my sense of humor through rehabilitation was absolutely vital but not tough. It's just part of my DNA.