Tim Curry Does the Time Warp

It does feel kind of like a play. Even people who haven’t seen it know Madeline Kahn’s “flames on the side of my face” speech. What was your experience with her?

I loved her. We got on very well, probably because I was an abject suitor who sat at her feet a lot. She just improvised that line, and it’s iconic. She was brilliant.

Let’s jump ahead to “Home Alone 2.” It came out in 1992, and you play the concierge at the Plaza, where it was shot. At the time, the Plaza was owned by our future President, Donald Trump, who also had a cameo. Can you describe your interactions with the Trumps?

When Donald bought the Plaza, he hired his then wife, Ivana, to redecorate the hotel, and she had, shall we say, uncertain taste. For example, I remember that the lobby of the Plaza had a beautiful black-and-white terrazzo floor, which she covered in a rather cheap-looking Persian carpet. Very garish colors. When I moved in—I lived there for the duration of the filming—she knocked on my door and said, “I just would like to know how you like your room.” I said, “I’m very happy here, thank you.” She said, “I’m so glad, because I completely redid it.” And I was happy there—not particularly with the look of it. You could have used sunglasses. And I had a view of a brick wall, which was not too glamorous.

Donald had a new lady called Marla Maples, who was a sometime actress, putting it delicately. The two of them were a steady feature in the tabloids, if you remember. And Donald said to me [imitates Trump], “I want Marla to meet the director, because she’s a very talented actress.” I said, “Well, then, she should.” I don’t think it happened, but maybe they did meet. He didn’t know much about acting, that’s for sure.

The director, Chris Columbus, has said that he bullied his way into the movie as part of the arrangement to use the Plaza. [Trump has denied this.]

I think he was determined to establish his relationship with the hotel, as the grand vizier.

You write that acting across from Macaulay Culkin was “tiresome, because he tended to gabble.”

He was very carefully drilled by his father to learn his lines, and he would just deliver them at high speed. Chris edited around him and would sometimes play his part for me when he was shooting my closeups. He was a nice kid, though. He used to come into the makeup trailer rather dazed and confused, because he was exhausted—he’d been watching TV all night.

You say that you and Joe Pesci were like “oil and water.” What was the problem with Joe Pesci?

I’m not entirely sure, but I think he thought that I wasn’t stellar enough to be in the movie with him.

A few years after that, you did “Muppet Treasure Island.” Did you have conflict with any of the Muppets?

I didn’t. They’re my favorites, actually. One of the great things about working with them is that you come to see them as characters and not as puppets, which is down to the brilliance of the Muppeteers. I loved Miss Piggy. We got on great.

She’s difficult to share the spotlight with.

She is. She’s a greedy girl. It was established in the script that we had, maybe sometime in the past, some kind of a fling together. And I improvised a line which never made it into the movie: “Once you’ve had pork, you never look back.” [Deep laugh.]

I want to ask you about your life more recently. You had a stroke in 2012, while getting a massage. The months and years of recovery were, I imagine, a very trying time.

It was a trying time, and still is. I’m still in recovery, partly because I’m having difficulties dealing with the wheelchair. I still can’t walk, and that’s awful, because I love to walk long distances. I grew up with my father and his father, going on long walks through the countryside. My grandfather used to use a wooden walking stick and beat back the nettles—just savage them. More than anything, it gave me my appreciation for the countryside of Britain.

With so much of your movement restricted, what’s kept you moving forward? It must have required a lot of will power.

I guess it did. But I live quite happily in my mind. And I, in the words of my mother, just got on with it.

You’ve always been an incredibly physical performer: your strut during “Sweet Transvestite” in “Rocky Horror,” or the way you run around unfurling the mystery at the end of “Clue.” Do you still feel that in your body? Does that live somewhere in you still?

I think it does, but it’s angry. My mobility is angry to get out. But it’s not happened yet. I do a certain amount of physical therapy. I did a whole bunch of it at Cedars-Sinai, and I got very close, I think, to walking. That was tantalizing. For insurance reasons, I had to withdraw. And I have a visiting physical therapist now, but I can only really do exercises from my bed, which is pretty pathetic. It’s not going to get me walking, I don’t believe.

I guess I’m asking what it’s like to think about your younger self doing these incredibly exciting, physical, dynamic roles that still live on the screen. Do they live in you the same way, even without that freedom of movement?

They do. They’re a part of me. I think we all probably have an attitude toward our history, and I cherish mine. ♦