Tim Curry Opens Up About Why He Dreaded Working With Huge Action Star

Tim Curry has shared some surprising memories about working with Tom Cruise during the filming of Legend, the 1986 fantasy movie directed by Ridley Scott.

In his new memoir Vagabond, released on October 14, the actor opened up about what it was really like to work alongside the then up-and-coming Cruise, and it turns out, he didn’t find the experience as magical as fans might think.

Curry explained that before filming, he had already seen Cruise in Risky Business and thought he was perfectly cast in that movie.

But when they worked together on Legend, his impression was different. “Before we met on the set of Legend, I had seen Risky Business with Tom cast perfectly as the cute, innocent young rebel,” he wrote. “And when we finally appeared in a film together, he was very nice and easy to be around — but he’s also quite unique, and not a person I fully understood. We never had any issues, but I cannot say I felt the appeal.”

The Rocky Horror Picture Show star admitted that, unlike many others, he wasn’t particularly taken by Cruise’s charm or early stardom. He said he didn’t feel the same excitement others did and even “dreaded” the idea of working with him at first.

Curry also noticed Cruise’s intense approach to acting, describing him as someone who took his role very seriously. “He was very into fully embodying his role, and I believe even requested to sleep on the snow set because he wanted to feel at home there,” Curry shared.

Because Curry played the film’s main villain, Darkness, he spent long hours in the makeup chair, sometimes up to six hours a day, to complete the transformation into his horned, demonic character.

That demanding process left little time to socialize. “I didn’t really engage with Tom Cruise all that much, perhaps because this wasn’t the type of film where we’d all sit around chatting — Ridley [Scott] didn’t foster that environment, and in my case my prosthetics regimen meant that I couldn’t exactly go out for pints prior to having my horns and hooves removed,” he explained. “By the end of my extrication I would be ready for nowhere but my own bed.”

Despite their limited interaction, Curry didn’t have anything negative to say about Cruise personally. He described him as polite and professional on set. “There’s not much I can say definitively about him, since we didn’t get to know each other very well, but at the end of the day I found him to be a very thoughtful, considerate colleague — which I appreciated.”

It’s interesting to hear Curry’s honest thoughts decades after the film’s release. While Legend went on to gain a cult following, it’s clear the experience behind the scenes wasn’t as enchanting for him.

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