In Memoriam: Dolly Parton & Tim Curry
The entertainment world lost two truly singular stars last week. Dolly Parton and Tim Curry both died last week on August 25 at the age of 80, leaving behind careers that stretched across decades, genres, and generations. They were both beloved
At first glance, Parton and Curry may seem like very different performers. One became the rhinestone-covered queen of country music, while the other built a career playing some of film and theater’s strangest, funniest, and most unforgettable characters. But both shared something that made them impossible to imitate: they understood the power of being completely, unapologetically themselves!
Few entertainers have ever been as universally beloved as Dolly Parton.
Born in rural Tennessee in 1946, Parton transformed her beginnings in the Smoky Mountains into a career that made her one of the most successful singer-songwriters in history. Songs like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and “I Will Always Love You” became classics, while Parton herself became instantly recognizable for her huge blonde hair, sparkling outfits, quick wit, and larger-than-life personality.
Behind all the rhinestones, however, was an extraordinary songwriter and storyteller. Parton wrote thousands of songs throughout her career and earned 25 No. 1 singles on the country charts. She also crossed easily into film and television, starring in movies including 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Steel Magnolias.
Her influence extended far beyond entertainment. Parton became one of the industry’s most prominent philanthropists, particularly through her Imagination Library, which has distributed hundreds of millions of books to children. She also supported disaster relief, hospitals, education, and medical research. In 2020, she famously donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center research that helped support development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
That generosity was part of what made Dolly feel different from many celebrities of her stature. Despite decades of fame, she maintained a warmth and accessibility that made millions of people feel as though they somehow knew her. A lot of people have said that losing Dolly feels like losing a member of their family.
Parton brought that same combination of humor, heart, and larger-than-life personality to Unlikely Angel.
In the film, Parton plays Ruby Diamond, a lounge singer who is killed in a car accident only to discover that her selfish behavior on Earth has kept her from entering Heaven. St. Peter gives Ruby one final assignment: reunite a fractured family and find a new mother for two children and their widowed father before Christmas.
Naturally, Ruby’s attempts at redemption lead to plenty of misunderstandings along the way. The film allows Parton to do what she did best: mix comedy and sincerity while playing a character whose flashy exterior hides a much softer heart.
Tim Curry built the kind of career where even a supporting role could become the thing audiences remembered most.
The British actor first found international fame as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1973 stage production of The Rocky Horror Show before bringing the character to the screen in 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The film initially struggled at the box office but eventually became one of cinema’s most famous cult movies, inspiring decades of midnight screenings, costumes, audience participation, and generations of fans who found a sense of community through its celebration of outsiders.
Curry’s performance as Frank-N-Furter was especially revolutionary. Strutting across the screen in corsets, fishnets, pearls, makeup, and platform heels, Curry created a character who gleefully ignored conventional ideas about masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and style.
Long before terms like gender-fluid fashion entered mainstream culture, Frank-N-Furter showed audiences the thrill of treating clothing, identity, and self-expression as something to play with rather than something dictated by rules. His performance became especially meaningful to generations of LGBTQ+ audiences and performers who saw Rocky Horror as a place where being strange, theatrical, queer, or simply different could be celebrated instead of hidden.
But Curry was far more than one iconic role.
He transformed himself again and again: the terrifying Pennywise in Stephen King’s It, the frantic butler Wadsworth in Clue, Rooster in Annie, the enormous demon Darkness in Legend, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, and King Arthur in Spamalot. He also became one of the entertainment industry’s most recognizable voice actors, lending his unmistakable voice to animation, video games, and television. His stage career earned him three Tony Award nominations.
Curry suffered a major stroke in 2012 that affected his mobility, but he continued acting through voice work and occasionally appeared at conventions and celebrations of his career.
One of Curry’s lesser-known performances can be found in Wolf Girl, a dark fantasy drama about outsiders searching for acceptance.
Tara is a teenage girl born with a rare condition that causes hair to grow across her entire body. Exploited as the “Terrifying Wolf Girl” in a traveling freak show, she spends her life being stared at as a spectacle rather than treated like an ordinary person.
Everything begins to change when Tara meets Cory, another young outsider who sees her as a person rather than a curiosity. Their relationship becomes a source of comfort as Tara struggles with her desire to change herself and finally experience what she believes to be a normal life.
Curry plays Harley Dune, the flamboyant leader of the traveling show. It is exactly the type of unusual world in which Curry always seemed perfectly at home. A story populated by misfits, performers, and people existing outside the boundaries of conventional society.
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry became icons in completely different corners of entertainment, but both ultimately offered audiences something similar: they made being yourself look powerful.
Parton turned the exaggerated version of femininity she loved into one of the most recognizable looks in entertainment while simultaneously becoming a respected songwriter, businesswoman, actress, and philanthropist.
Curry showed generations of audiences that strange could be glamorous, villains could be magnetic, and a performer could ignore the boundaries separating comedy, horror, theater, music, masculinity, femininity, and everything in between.
This week, we remember Dolly Parton and Tim Curry by celebrating two careers that proved there is no single way to become an icon.
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