British actor Tim Curry, who died Aug. 26 at age 80, was asked in 1988 if he was worried he was going to be remembered solely for his role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter – “a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania” – in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Curry first premiered the role onstage in 1973, before bringing it to  the big screen in 1975.  Well, he wasn’t: “What’s really nice about The Rocky Horror Picture Show going on as it has is that every year it introduces a bunch of people to my work and if they want to see me do anything else … they are able to. I’m extremely proud of it.” Certainly anyone who saw his campy perfection, opposite Susan Sarandon, when the film came out – or at a New Year’s midnight screening in the last five decades – will never forget him. But neither will those lucky enough to have seen him perform on Broadway in his three Tony-nominated roles: Mozart in Amadeus, Alan Swann in My Favorite Year and King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot. And he’ll be with us every Halloween when kids don Pennywise masks from Stephen King’s It – that was Curry behind the clown makeup. Just last year, the actor penned a moving memoir, called Vagabond, a description he embraced. “A vagabond looks upon the world as a field of potential and possibility, where beauty can be not just found but created,” he writes, “and adventure awaits any and all who are willing to seek it out.”  |  Getty Images