Tim Curry The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Tim Curry was forty-three years old when The Hunt for Red October opened, fifteen years past The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) which had defined his cult-actor reputation, and one year past It (1990) — Stephen King's two-part ABC miniseries — in which his Pennywise the Dancing Clown frightened a generation of children. He played Dr. Yevgeni Petrov, Red October's medical officer and the film's only sustained note of Russian pomposity, in a role that exists almost entirely as comic ballast for the gravity of Connery and Neill.
A theater-trained character actor with a distinctive voice
Curry was born in Cheshire, England in 1946 and trained at Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. Hair in London, then on Broadway, gave him his first stage notice. The Rocky Horror Show — first as a 1973 stage production at London's Royal Court, then as the 1975 film — made him an icon. Frank-N-Furter remains the role most closely identified with him, though he has actively resisted being defined by it.
Through the 1980s and 1990s he built one of the most varied character-acting careers of his generation: Annie (1982) as Rooster, Clue (1985) as Wadsworth, Legend (1985) as the Lord of Darkness, It (1990) as Pennywise, Home Alone 2 (1992) as the Plaza Hotel concierge, The Three Musketeers (1993) as Cardinal Richelieu, Muppet Treasure Island (1996) as Long John Silver, and a vast amount of voice work including FernGully, Peter Pan, and the Final Fantasy games.
"Tim Curry could play any role in any genre. He could be a Transylvanian transvestite, a clown, a French cardinal, or a Russian doctor, and the audience never thought twice. The voice was the through-line." — Geoffrey Rush, The Telegraph (2018)
What Petrov does in the film
Dr. Petrov is the medical officer aboard Red October. He is not in on the defection conspiracy — he is, in fact, the unwitting accelerator who, after Putin's "accident," genuinely believes the cryogenic plant failure is a real reactor emergency and insists Ramius evacuate the crew. The character's function is to be the conspiracy's plausible witness: a senior officer who is not part of the plan but who advocates for the actions the plan requires.
Curry plays Petrov as a man slightly above his station. He is pompous about Soviet medical technique, fawning toward Ramius, theatrically concerned about Putin's death, and ultimately the unwitting force that completes the evacuation cover story. The performance gives the film its only significant comic note, which it badly needs at the midpoint to keep from collapsing under its own seriousness.
"Petrov is the man you dread in any institution — the middle manager who takes everything more seriously than the people in charge do. Curry plays him with exactly the right level of earnestness, and the result is one of the funnier supporting performances in any thriller of the period." — Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central (2018)
The Order of Lenin scene — Petrov solemnly informs Ramius he will be honored for his sacrifice when in fact Ramius is about to defect — is the film's most layered piece of dramatic irony. Petrov means it. Ramius accepts it. The audience knows. Curry plays the scene with the exact register of a junior officer who believes he is delivering meaningful news.
After Red October
Curry's career continued through the 1990s and 2000s with steady work in film, television, animation, and stage musicals — Spamalot on Broadway (2005) as King Arthur, The Kid Stays in the Picture (2017) — until a stroke in 2012 left him with mobility issues. He has continued voice work since the stroke, and has remained a beloved cult figure across multiple generations.
"Tim Curry was the rare British character actor who could land equally well in horror, musical comedy, prestige drama, and children's animation. There was nobody else like him." — Stephen King, Twitter, on Curry's stroke recovery (2014)