Commentary: Tim Curry's British charm and Cheshire grin were made for comedy. These 7 TV roles show why

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred The death of Tim Curry, at 80, has inspired many to praise his performance as Pennywise in the 1990 ABC miniseries “It” — second, after “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — though that is not at all the thing I’d want to attach to his memory.About “Rocky Horror” it’s impossible to say enough good things, as entertainment and long-echoing cultural force, but to my mind the world is better remembering him as the sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania, rather than a child-murdering clown who lives in a sewer.Of course, there was much more to him than these polar roles.

Curry was a stage actor first, creating the part of Dr.Frank-N-Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show” (pre-“Picture”), and playing dadaist Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties,” Mozart in “Amadeus” and King Arthur in “Spamalot” in their original Broadway productions.

(I can only imagine his Puck in the Scottish Opera’s 1972 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and perhaps you’d like to too.) He made a lot of movies and, though you might not have noticed, a good deal of television.Movies Tim Curry, the beloved and versatile star who famously commanded attention as the seductive mad scientist Dr.

Frank-N-Furter in the cult classic musical ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ has died.He was 80.As has been the case with many U.K.

actors looking for work on American TV — especially in the years before they all mastered American accents and became indistinguishable from the homegrown brand — Curry looked to comedy.His appearances here accentuate his Britishness (read: propriety), giving him multisyllabic words (e.g., “nomenclature”) and fancy locutions to play with.

Some play off a character’s propriety, all profit from the actor’s charm — which might be turned to evil ...