As far as Horror films go, one of the most iconic performances of all time would definitely have to be Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown in 1990’s IT.
His portrayal of the killer clown scared an entire generation for years, and gave many people a fear of clowns.
While attending Fan Expo Canada, Curry was talking about a scene in which he apparently really scared the child actor who played Georgie, and got back into character for a moment – and he’s definitely still got that creepy sound we all remember:
Curry definitely still has his humor – which is great to hear, considering his recent health hasn’t been all that great.
We were even able to personally ask the actor what he thought about the upcoming portrayal of the character by Bill Skarsgard – and he had some pretty positive things to say:
“Well, I like [Bill] Skarsgard very much, I think he’s very clever. It’ll be interesting what sort of clown face he puts on, because it’s not an obvious clown face at all. I’ve seen the trailer and you can’t really see him at all. So I’m fascinated to see it. He’s very good.”
He also added:
“I hope they make the ending better because on [the TV version], I turned into some kind of giant spider and it was not very scary.”
Skarsgard has also acknowledged Curry’s performance shouldn’t be compared to his:
“It was always important for me to reinvent It and reinterpret It in a different way. I sort of grew up with the Tim performance and I was very familiar with it and a huge fan as an actor, so my process of preparing for the role was, “okay this needs to be different” and I think we did that, I think this Pennywise is different and they can stand alone – there’s no need to compare them as you can appreciate both but it was important to me to do something new and something original with the take on the character.”
IT hits theaters September 8th.