From Pennywise in Vancouver to Christmas at West Edmonton Mall, Tim Curry left a long Canadian trail

Tim Curry’s Canadian work included It in Vancouver, Christmas in Wonderland at West Edmonton Mall and his return to Rocky Horror in Ontario.

Photo credit: TimCurry.co.uk

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Tim Curry was eating lunch in Vancouver’s Stanley Park on June 27, 1990, still in full Pennywise makeup, when journalist Steve Newton sat down to interview him. Curry was in Vancouver filming the television adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and when Newton asked how he approached Pennywise, Curry offered a description that has held up remarkably well: “I think of him all the time as a smile gone bad.”

Curry died Aug. 25 at the age of 80, leaving a career that ranged across theatre, film, television, music and voice acting. His best-known roles included Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wadsworth in Clue and Pennywise in It, but Canada appears repeatedly across that career as well. Curry performed here as a singer and stage actor, worked on television productions in Vancouver, made films in Ontario and Edmonton and later returned to meet Canadian fans.

Curry performed in Canada during his music career

Curry pursued recording alongside acting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, releasing Read My Lips in 1978, Fearless in 1979 and Simplicity in 1981. A Canadian connection was already present on that first album: Curry recorded “Birds of a Feather,” written by Carole Pope and Kevan Staples, the musicians behind Toronto band Rough Trade.

He also performed in Canada during his 1979 music career. Archival Montreal records preserve contemporary newspaper coverage of his appearance at Le Pretzel Enchaîné that summer, including a profile in the Montreal Gazette and a review in the Montreal Star. Nearly a decade later, Curry appeared in Toronto in the touring production of Me and My Girl. Canadian music-industry publication RPM reported his engagement at the O’Keefe Centre, where he played Bill Snibson, the Cockney heir at the centre of the musical.

By then, Curry’s career already extended well beyond Rocky Horror. He had played Mozart opposite Ian McKellen in Amadeus and appeared in films including Annie, Legend and Clue. Television would soon bring him west, where Vancouver became the setting for some of the most recognizable work of his career.

Vancouver gave Curry one of his best-known roles

Curry appeared in six episodes of Wiseguy in 1989 as Winston Newquay, during the period when the crime series was being produced in Vancouver. Soon afterward came It, the 1990 television adaptation that would make Pennywise one of Curry’s most enduring screen characters.

The production was shooting in Vancouver when Newton visited Curry on the Stanley Park set while working on assignment for Fangoria. The surviving interview captures Curry discussing Pennywise while he was still making the performance, including the practical demands of the role and his thinking about what made the character frightening.

Curry said Pennywise would appear periodically, “do something vile” and disappear again. He also described an earlier version of the character that had relied more heavily on prosthetics, something he felt was doing too much of the work for him. The final Pennywise still involved substantial makeup, including prosthetic elements, and Curry said the process could take about three hours.

His larger point was about where horror came from. Curry argued that fear could be more effective when it remained psychological rather than depending too heavily on gore, latex or visual effects. That thinking became part of a performance that stayed closely associated with him for decades.

The Canadian connection resurfaced in 2017, when Curry appeared at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto. With a new film adaptation of It approaching release, he was asked about Bill Skarsgård, who had taken over the role of Pennywise. Curry said he liked Skarsgård “very much,” called him clever and said he was fascinated to see what the younger actor would do with the character.

That Toronto appearance came five years after Curry suffered a major stroke in 2012. His official biography says that, beginning in 2016, he travelled extensively in Canada and the United States for conventions, fan expos and similar appearances.

Curry’s Canadian work reached Ontario and Edmonton

Curry returned to Canada for several screen projects during the 2000s. Ontario production records list him among the key cast of the family film that became Bailey’s Billion$, which shot in the province from Sept. 8 to Oct. 20, 2003. Curry played Caspar Pennington.

Four years later, he appeared in Christmas in Wonderland, filmed at West Edmonton Mall, alongside a cast that included Patrick Swayze, Chris Kattan and Carmen Electra. Curry played McLoosh, adding an Alberta production to a Canadian filmography that had already taken him through Toronto and Vancouver.

That same year, Curry guest-starred as acerbic talent-show judge Nigel St. Nigel in the Psych episode “American Duos.” The series was largely filmed in Vancouver, with nearby White Rock also used as a stand-in for Santa Barbara.

Curry returned to Rocky Horror in Ontario

One of Curry’s later major television appearances also brought him back to the project that had first made him internationally recognizable. Fox’s 2016 production The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again cast Laverne Cox as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and brought Curry back as the Criminologist.

Ontario Creates records show the production filmed in the province from March 14 to April 27, 2016, with Curry and Cox listed among the key cast. Curry had originated Frank-N-Furter in the 1973 Royal Court Theatre production in London before taking the role into subsequent stage productions and the 1975 film, so his return to Rocky Horror more than 40 years later also became another Canadian chapter in his career.

By then, Curry’s work stretched across several generations of popular culture, from Rocky Horror and Clue to Pennywise, Nigel Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys and an extensive catalogue of animation and video-game work.

Across those different phases, Canada kept appearing: in his music career, on a Toronto stage, on Vancouver television sets, during film productions in Ontario and Edmonton and later in front of Canadian convention audiences.

The most vivid Canadian record of Curry himself may still be that afternoon in Stanley Park in 1990. Sitting there in Pennywise makeup between scenes, Curry was already thinking carefully about what made the character work and how much of the fear should come from the person beneath the makeup. His shorthand for Pennywise was simpler: “a smile gone bad.”