Tim Curry suffered a devastating stroke during a massage that left him in a wheelchair during his final years, but he wrote to the masseuse who saw it as possible to save his life.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show star, who died on Tuesday night aged 80, opened up about his 2012 stroke in a candid interview that aired last year.
Curry suffered two brain bleeds during the medical emergency, which he didn’t even know were happening because he didn’t feel any of his symptoms while lying on the massage table in his Los Angeles home.
“It was so strange,” Curry told CBS Sunday Mornings in October 2025. “I was having a massage and the man giving me a massage said, ‘I’m worried about you, I think we need to call a doctor.’
‘I felt fine, I had no symptoms that I was aware of, but he had obviously noticed a few.
“He called 911 and an ambulance came and they carried me down the stairs of my house on a stretcher, put me in an ambulance and gave me morphine, which was interesting. I had no pain.
‘I was very nervous because I didn’t know what was going on. They didn’t know I had had a stroke and I didn’t know either.
“I said can you take me to Cedars-Sinai, which is probably the best hospital in the city, and they said they had to take me to a closer hospital, a Kaiser Permanente.”
The late actor Tim Curry suffered a devastating stroke during a massage, leaving him in a wheelchair during his final years, but the masseuse possibly saved his life. He is pictured speaking to CBS Sunday Morning about the 2012 ordeal in October 2025
Tim Curry was best known for his role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Curry said that when doctors told him he had suffered a stroke, he “immediately” thought of his father, James Curry, who survived a stroke when the Rocky Horror star was just 11 years old.
“I knew that many people don’t survive strokes, and that he was an exception, so I was scared,” he said.
Curry said he had brain surgery and then spent “about a month” in the hospital for rehabilitation.
“I had to learn to talk again, which was very strange,” he said. ‘I hated not being able to talk, because I talk a lot. I have to be told to keep quiet a lot. I love words, I love communicating.’
Curry, who was that? best known for playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, died last night at his LA home, as confirmed by his manager the next day.
He had suffered from serious health problems for more than a decade and no foul play is suspected.
After the 1973 role that made his name, Curry joined the cast of 1992’s Home Alone 2, playing Mr Hector, a stuffy and suspicious concierge at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
Between 2004 and 2007, Curry portrayed King Arthur in the Monty Python musical Spamalot on stage in Chicago, Broadway and the West End.
Curry is pictured in 2016 at the red carpet premiere of The Rocky Horror Picture Show: ‘Lets Do the Time Warp Again’ at The Roxy in West Hollywood, California
Curry also played the janitor in Home Alone 2, as seen in the 1992 photo above
Some of his stage credits include What About Dick? Including My Favorite Year and Travesties.
In 2015, he was honored with the Actors Fund Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tony Awards Viewing Party in Los Angeles.
Curry opened up about his well-being last year during a special screening to mark the 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Speaking to the audience at the Academy Museum in LA, he said: ‘I still can’t walk, so I sit in this crazy chair, and it’s very limiting.
“So I won’t be singing and I won’t be dancing anytime soon. I still have real problems with my left leg.’
Since the stroke, which he suffered at the age of 67, the legendary actor has largely remained out of the public eye.
