Tim Curry, whose voice carried Disney villains across a decade of animated television and one of Walt Disney World’s most notorious attractions, has died at 80. The actor died late Tuesday night at his Los Angeles home, with police responding to the residence at 11:23 PM and finding no signs of foul play. Curry had dealt with serious health issues since a 2012 stroke that required brain surgery and left him unable to walk.
Most obituaries will lead with Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries It, or Wadsworth in Clue. For Disney fans, the resume looks different. Curry spent the mid-1990s as one of the busiest voices in Disney Television Animation, and he played the pirate at the center of a Muppet feature film.
Long John Silver In Muppet Treasure Island
Curry’s biggest Disney screen role came in 1996 with Muppet Treasure Island, the fifth Muppet feature film. Curry played Long John Silver opposite Kermit’s Captain Smollett, Miss Piggy’s Benjamina Gunn and a young Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins. It was a live-action leading role in a film full of puppets, and Curry sang, schemed and mugged his way through it with the same commitment he brought to the stage. He said repeatedly over the years that Silver was one of his favorite parts, and he reprised the character as the player’s guide in the Muppet Treasure Island CD-ROM game from Activision. The Muppets remain a live franchise at Disney today, with The Muppet Show revival collecting Emmy nominations earlier this summer.
A Decade Of Disney Afternoon Villains
Curry’s distinctive voice showed up in nearly every Disney Television Animation series of the era. He was Taurus Bulba in Darkwing Duck, Thaddeus E. Klang in TaleSpin and the Evil Manta in The Little Mermaid series. On Gargoyles he voiced Dr. Anton Sevarius, the mad geneticist behind the mutates and one of the show’s most quoted villains. He played Lord Dragaunus in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, Moltoc in Quack Pack, Dr. Slicer in Recess, and three different characters in the Aladdin series, including Caliph Kapok. Later Disney credits included Percival in The Proud Family, Worthington Dubois on Phineas and Ferb, and The Sorcerer in the first season of Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja.
His most beloved Disney animation role may be Maestro Forte, the vengeful pipe organ in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. The 1997 direct-to-video film, set during the events of the original, gave Curry a computer-animated villain and a showstopping number, “Don’t Fall in Love,” and Forte has since become a fixture on lists of underrated Disney villains.
The Voice That Scared Guests At Magic Kingdom
Parks fans know Curry from a different corner of the company. When The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter opened in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom on June 20, 1995, Curry voiced S.I.R., the Simulated Intelligence Robotics sales robot who hosted the second preshow. S.I.R. demonstrated X-S Tech’s teleportation device on a small alien named Skippy, who arrived across the room charred and dazed. The character was originally a friendlier robot named T.O.M. 2000 voiced by Phil Hartman during the attraction’s brief December 1994 preview. After Michael Eisner ordered the show closed and retooled for not being scary enough, the robot returned as S.I.R. with Curry’s voice and a much crueler edge. The attraction ran until October 2003, when it was replaced by Stitch’s Great Escape, but Curry’s preshow remains one of the most vividly remembered pieces of audio Walt Disney World ever produced.
Curry also voiced Palpatine in seasons five and six of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, taking over the role from the late Ian Abercrombie in 2013, shortly after Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm.
Curry’s last major public work was his 2025 memoir, Vagabond, which covered his stroke and recovery. He was 80.
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