Tim Curry Needed Medical Attention To Make It Through One Of His Best Movies

If Tim Curry's going to do anything, it's chew the scenery with such relish that he'll be picking chunks out of his teeth after. His oeuvre is littered with delectably animated, over the top performances, and justly so for an actor who lives and breathes theatricality. (As the late Joel Schumacher once put it, "Oh honey, no one ever paid to see under the top.") Still, if we're talking about the most Tim Curry performance ever ... it would be Dr. Frank N. Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." But Wadsworth, the wily butler in "Clue," wouldn't be all that far behind.

Jonathan Lynn's cult 1985 mystery-comedy, which he both wrote and directed, remains the gold standard for board game movies (which isn't saying much, but a bar is still a bar). Much as "Knives Out" and the wave of whodunnits spawned by Rian Johnson's hit owe a hefty debt to Agatha Christie, they also share a lot of their zany energy and sensibilities with "Clue." The latter may lack the high artistry of Johnson's Benoit Blanc series, but it makes up for that with its non-stop banter and innuendo so in-your-face that it's hard not to chuckle. With comedy giants like Curry, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Lloyd yukking it up in a decadent manor full of nooks and crannies for people to sneak about and possibly commit murder in, there's plenty of hammy fun to go around.

Curry, specifically, got a full-blown aerobic workout from shooting "Clue." The film famously screened with three different endings in theaters (they were later bundled together for its home release), all of which have Wadsworth delivering a unique exposition dump at a furious clip while literally scurrying around the mansion. To hear Curry tell it, it was as exhausting as it sounds.

Tackling a wordy, rapid-fire monologue while practically running around a set sounds taxing enough, but three of them? The role of Wadsworth was already demanding enough even before Curry got to that. "It was a bit scary, because he never draws breath!" the actor told Empire magazine when interviewed in 2023. By the time he was done filming a trio of denouements, he was just about ready to collapse for real. "It was exhausting. Actually, when we finished that sequence, I had to go to the company nurse. My blood pressure was through the roof!" Curry added. I don't doubt him a lick.

As though that wasn't enough, Lynn nearly incorporated a fourth ending in which, according to Curry, Wadsworth "ran around the house killing everybody." In keeping with the "Rule of Three," though, Lynn scrapped this comedic sequence upon realizing he'd come up with one too many conclusions. "It wasn't funny enough. It wasn't surprising enough. It ended the film on an anti-climax. So I just took it out. Three was enough," he explained.

Three rounds of Wadsworth running amok, breathlessly proclaiming who did or didn't kill whom in what room with what item, was more than enough to cement the character as one of Curry's best creations. He's had first-hand experience when it comes to the love the film has fostered as a cult hit over time, too. "I've met some real 'Clue' fans at conventions, who even came dressed as some of the characters. Which was familiar to me because I'd had that for years with 'Rocky Horror,' of course," he noted. No doubt, that's a far easier bit of cosplay to manage than Curry's sexy devil-man Darkness from "Legend," but one imagines the actor appreciates the display of affection all the same.