Currying favour with Poirot (From The Northern Echo)

Currying favour with Poirot

12:34pm Thursday 24th December 2009

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❛CONTRARY to popular belief, I don’t just play dreadful old villains,” cackles Tim Curry. His trademark laugh, manic eyes and demonic smile are just three reasons why he’s has spent the last 40 years, playing some of the most malicious and extrovert characters stage and screen have to offer.

Perhaps best known for playing mad, devious scientist Dr Frank-NFurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, his turn as Pennywise the clown in Stephen King’s It and Wadsworth the barmy butler in Clue have also ensured his notoriety.

This Christmas, Curry’s cutting down the crazy for an appearance in ITV’s latest Poirot adaptation Appointment With Death.

“One of the reasons I wanted to play the part of Lord Boynton is that he’s not evil, but brilliantly eccentric,” he explains of the determined archaeologist.

“Lord Boynton is an obsessive, to the point where he can’t manage any relationship. He’s of that breed, you know, the last of the ‘’stiff upper lip’ academics. Agatha Christie’s husband was an archaeologist so I think a lot of Appointment With Death was written from her own experience of that world.”

While the legendary crime writer may have had an insight into that world, she didn’t actually write Lord Boynton at all. He’s a new character for this 2009 version and has been added to the story – first published as a novel in 1938 – in order to keep it fresh for viewers.

Filming took place in Morocco in the spring of 2008 and, as Curry, 63, explains, it was an enjoyable process.

“It was so much fun, not least because we got to go to Casablanca and El Jadid in Morocco. I do love Poirot too, so acting in one was wonderful. Being an expat,”

says Curry, who has lived in Los Angeles for the past 21 years.

“I’ve always enjoyed watching shows like Poirot, Miss Marple and Midsomer Murders. It’s also a way of keeping up with old friends, I can see what they’re all in.”

The cast include the League Of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss, who was born in the North-East and The Mummy’s John Hannah.

“It’s a cracking cast,” says Curry, “plus we got five weeks to film, which for 90 minutes is very generous these days.”

Curry also pops up in the BBC’s Cranford special, playing the mysterious magician Signor Brunoni – and a part which was linked to Poirot.

“Elizabeth McGovern, who is in Appointment With Death, is married to Simon Curtis who directs Cranford,” says Curry. “We all had dinner one night and he gave me the DVD of the series. I played it over and over in my hotel room, and then I begged for a part in this one.”

In the New Year, Curry is coming back to the UK to shoot a film about serial killers Burke and Hare, and is contemplating making the stay permanent.

“ I certainly like the idea of working in Britain more and more.”

■ Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Appointment With Death, ITV1, Christmas Day, 9pm

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