Tim Curry was just 10 years old when his world came crashing down.
His father, Jim Curry, a Methodist naval chaplain, suffered a stroke, and weeks later, already hospitalized, pneumonia took him forever. He was only 49 years old. In his autobiography ‘Vagabond: A Memoir’, the actor who would later bring Pennywise and Frank-N-Furter to life confesses that the loss left him sunk in a loneliness that never completely went away. He tried to become ‘the man of the house’ to support his mother, but he never felt convincing in that role — and she, shattered by grief, became irritable as the months went by.
The most heartbreaking part came decades later. In 2012, already an acclaimed actor, Curry suffered his own stroke at his home in Los Angeles. While struggling to breathe, he thought of his father, of the same illness that had taken him away when he was just a child. The story came full circle with an echo he himself could not help but feel.
