‘Risky is the best way to be’: Tim Curry on sexuality, surviving a stroke – and 50 years of stardom

From Rocky Horror to the Muppets, Curry’s extraordinary career made him world-famous. Then, a stroke left him paralysed. The actor talks about his cocaine years, his friendship with David Bowie – and the moment his mother came at him with a knife

‘It’s difficult not to see it as a kind of finale,” says Tim Curry of his memoir, Vagabond. That he’s written it at all is a surprise. Curry has always liked the comfort of privacy – my efforts to persuade him to do an interview with the Guardian began more than five years ago. At 79, he still prefers looking forward, too, which is how he has covered so much ground in his career.

Boundless energy has been the actor’s hallmark. He once exerted so much while filming the murder mystery comedy Clue – in which he plays the frantic, sharp-tongued butler Wadsworth – that a nurse who took his blood pressure on set told him he was at risk of having a heart attack.

I’ve always tried to make my villains amusing. It gives them a bit more edge