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Legendary actor Tim Curry opened up about learning to talk again after he suffered a major stroke in 2012. While appearing on CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday, October 19, Curry, 79, looked back at the health scare and revealed he didn’t know anything was wrong until a masseuse suggested he go to the hospital. “It was so strange,” he said of the experience. “I was actually having a massage, and the guy who was giving me a massage said, ‘I’m worried about you. I think we should call a doctor.’ I felt fine. I had no symptoms I was aware of. I wasn’t in pain.” Curry said he found out he had a stroke after he was admitted to the hospital. The experience immediately made him think of his father, who suffered a fatal stroke when Curry was younger. “I was scared,” he said recalled of learning that he had the same experience as his father. Following his stroke, Curry underwent brain surgery and rehabilitation. “I had to learn how to speak again,” he said. “That was very weird. I hated not being able to speak.” Not only did he have to re-learn how to speak, but Curry had to adapt to the left side of his face becoming paralyzed. “My face kind of went sideways,” he said. Also during the interview, Curry looked back on his iconic role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, who was described as “the sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvania” in the film. 50 years after the movie’s release, Curry said that the character helped others who might have been afraid to be different. “He had a lot of power — Frank. He gave a lot of teenagers permission to be different and i’m very happy that he did have that power,” Curry said. Another topic he touched on in the interview was his complicated relationship with his mother, Patricia Curry. When interviewer Ben Mankiewicz asked how his mother reacted to the fame he experienced after his role in the cult classic film, Curry admitted, “She didn’t make much of it. She was scared of it. She thought it would change me.” “She said to me later that, ‘I thought your head was gonna grow too big.’ There was certainly a whole thing about not putting your head above the parapet,” the Home Alone 2: Lost in New York actor recalled. “It wasn’t good to be noticed. She would have preferred me to operate under the radar.” Parade Daily🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Mankiewicz, 58, then joked that Curry was “unsuccessful” in that regard, which led the actor to responded, “I never did. I didn’t give a s–t about the radar.”
