Vagabond by Tim Curry [Book Review]

Tim Curry somehow spent fifty years becoming one of the most recognizable actors alive while also remaining a complete mystery. Kind of impressive. Read my review of Vagabond.

I went into Vagabond realizing something kind of ridiculous: Tim Curry has been around for my entire life, and I somehow knew absolutely nothing about him as a person. I’ve seen Rocky Horror and Clue. I’ve seen Annie. And I’ve seen IT. I’ve even seen his guest role on Criminal Minds, which, frankly, still haunts me a little. But the actual man behind all those performances was a total mystery.

And I think maybe Tim Curry prefers it that way.

Find out more about the book and why I gave it an easy 4.25/5 stars.

What is the book about?

In his memoir, Curry takes readers behind the scenes of his rise to fame from his early beginnings as a military brat to his formative years in boarding school and university, to the moment when he hit the stage for the first time. He goes in-depth about what it was like to work on some of the most emblematic works of the 20th century, constantly switching between a camera and a live audience. He also explores the voicework that defined his later career and provided him with a chance to pivot after surviving a catastrophic stroke in 2012 that nearly took his life.

My thoughts:

Vagabond is not one of those chaotic celebrity memoirs where someone spends 400 pages settling scores and revealing who was secretly sleeping with whom in the 1970s. It’s much quieter than that. Smarter, too. Curry comes across as incredibly witty, thoughtful, and very aware of the strangeness of fame.

His “voice” absolutely makes the book. Even when he glosses over moments you kind of wish he’d unpack more, he’s such a good storyteller that I didn’t really care.

What I liked most is that the memoir is less about scandal and more about performance itself. There’s also something unexpectedly emotional underneath it all, especially once the book reaches the years surrounding his stroke and the shifts that came afterward.

That said, sometimes the writing was a little too restrained. There were definitely moments where I wanted him to crack the door open a little wider. But weirdly, that guardedness also feels very “Tim Curry.” The man gave us Frank-N-Furter and Pennywise and somehow still managed to remain mysterious for decades.

I ended up really loving this. Also, I now desperately want to rewatch Clue for the 900th time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an advanced reader’s copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

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