Luke Evans’ Tim Curry Tribute Shares the Private Letter He Wrote Him Three Weeks Before His Death

Tim Curry died Tuesday night (August 25, 2026) at 80, and the tributes have been pouring in ever since — but few carried the intimacy of the one Luke Evans posted this week.

Curry spent five decades building a career around theatrical excess: Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the scheming butler Wadsworth in Clue, the con man Rooster in Annie. He made a career out of characters other actors were too nervous to attempt.

Evans knows that inheritance firsthand. He’d just wrapped a seven-month, Tony-nominated run as Frank-N-Furter in Broadway’s revival of The Rocky Horror Show, playing the same role Curry originated more than fifty years earlier. His final performance came just days before Curry died.

On Instagram, Evans described Curry as “a force, a bright fierce flame, an exquisite charm and that rich vocal tone,” crediting him as an inspiration that reached far beyond his own performance.

Then came the harder part. Evans revealed he’d written Curry a private letter three weeks earlier, as his run wound toward its close, and decided in his grief to share it publicly.

He opened the letter by describing himself as nearly ready to hang up the fishnets and heels for good. Then he got to what he actually wanted to say.

Evans admitted the two had never met in person. Still, he wrote, Curry had “been part of this journey from the very beginning,” present in every performance whether he knew it or not.

He also addressed the shadow every new Frank-N-Furter inherits, choosing not to fight the comparison. Instead, he echoed Curry’s own words on the matter: “There will only be one Tim Curry.”

Evans thanked him plainly for the door he’d opened, writing that Curry deserved credit for “inspiring generations of actors to be a little braver.”

The letter also held something smaller and more personal. Evans recalled interviewing Curry years earlier for a Rocky Horror documentary, and a warm exchange the two shared at the show’s 50th anniversary, when Curry paid him an offhand compliment that made them both laugh.

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Evans wasn’t alone in his grief. Jillian Bell, who never worked with Curry but has long cited him as a formative influence, wrote that Curry was “the person who made me want to be an actor.”

Carol Burnett, Curry’s Annie co-star, kept her own tribute simple: “Nobody could play lovable villains better than he could.”

What sets Evans’ tribute apart isn’t length or polish. It’s timing. He wrote to Curry without knowing it would be a goodbye, then found himself publishing that same letter as one.

Curry spent decades teaching performers that it was safe to be strange, theatrical, and fully committed on stage. Evans spent seven months living inside that legacy every night.