Whether through their message, their characters, or their aesthetics, some films leave a lasting impression. For Princess Diana, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the film that unexpectedly captured her youth. Tim Curry, one of the stars of the cult film, said he was surprised to learn that the princess was familiar with his work.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today, the British actor recalled the singular moment when he met the late princess and her then-husband, King Charles III. The royal couple had gone to see his starring role in the play Love for Love. “Diana said, ‘You were in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, weren’t you?’, and I said, ‘Yes, ma’am, but I don’t imagine that you saw it’, and she said, ‘No, of course, I did, it very much completed my education.’”
Tim Curry still remembers this anecdote with amusement. In the interview, he said The Rocky Horror Picture Show “gives audiences the permission to behave badly”—or, as his character Dr. Frank-N-Furter would put it, “to swim the warm waters of the sins of the flesh.”
The Princess of Wales had a real passion for the movies. She even came close to starring in a sequel to the legendary Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard, in which she would have succeeded Whitney Houston. Her former butler, Paul Burrell, recounts the episode in his recent book The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King, and Princess Diana.
“She was approached to appear in The Bodyguard II alongside Kevin Costner.,” the former butler wrote. “I put the call from Mr. Costner through to her in the sitting room and heard fits of giggles with her saying, ‘But I can’t sing! What would I be expected to do?…Send it, and I promise I will have a look.’”
Flattered, but lucid, the princess nevertheless confided to Burrell: “He can’t be serious.” The script did eventually reach her, but Diana declined the offer, believing the project to be an “entirely impossible” challenge.
Curry also left his mark on an entire generation in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, in which he played the concierge of a New York palace. On the set, he even crossed paths with Donald Trump—then a flamboyant businessman who made a brief appearance in the film. “He had explosive confidence,” the actor recalls. “He was completely sure of himself on the set.”
Now 79, the actor lives with the after-effects of a stroke in 2012, which paralyzed his entire left side. “It’s horrible, I hate the idea of being disabled,” he said in his interview with the BBC. Nevertheless, he still has the same sparkling spirit—the one that unknowingly helped “complete the education” of a certain iconic royal.
Originally published in Vanity Fair France.
