September 9, 2026 — 7:00pm
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It’s a morbid coincidence that I’m speaking to Stephen Curry about his role as King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot the day after the death of the actor who originated it, Tim Curry (no relation).
“Oh, mate, it’s Dolly Parton one day, Tim Curry the next. It’s a terrible year for sad losses,” he says from his home in the Macedon Ranges. “He’s a master and one of my all-time heroes. I’ve tried to find video [of his Spamalot performance] but there’s no real footage, so I guess I’ll have to just make it up myself.”
At 50, Stephen Curry is making his musical theatre debut in Monty Python’s Spamalot.Eugene Hyland
Despite boasting more than 80 film and TV credits dating back to the early ’90s, the role marks Curry’s first foray into musical theatre. “It sure is,” he says, laughing. “At age 50, little Stephen Curry is going to make his musical theatre debut. I mean, I grew up doing theatre as a kid but no one ever paid me for it.”
The role comes amid a purple patch for Curry. Last October, with his brother Bernard, he won The Amazing Race Australia’s celebrity edition (despite his dodgy knees), and this year he’s been filming the sci-fi thriller Starman in Sydney with Oscar winner Brendan Fraser.
But one place you won’t find him? In the much-anticipated stage adaptation of the film that made him a local star, The Castle. “I’ve had, I reckon, 12 people in the last three weeks ask me if I’m playing Dale Kerrigan in the stage play and my response has been, ‘I have range but I don’t think I can play a 16-year-old any more’.”
Worst habit?
I never know where my car keys are. I can tell you all the names of the Bali Nine but even right now I don’t know where my keys are. I live out in the bush, mate. If I can’t find my car keys, I’m stitched. My wife even bought me one of those things you put on your key ring that when you whistle it beeps, but that didn’t work because I put them somewhere I couldn’t hear the beeping.
Curry (front centre) as Dale Kerrigan in The Castle, the role that made him a local star 30 years ago.
Greatest fear?
Having to get a real job. I started acting from a young age but the acting work dried up for a bit when I was 18, so I worked in a bakery for six months. I wasn’t good at it. I realised that real jobs – and when I say “real jobs”, I mean a job that isn’t one you spring out of bed and get excited about doing – aren’t for me. I greatly admire people who do them but I hope to god I can finish my working life doing what I love.
My parents and teachers always advised me to get something to fall back on but I ignored them. Now that I’m 50 and I’ve got the knees and the back of a 90-year-old retired librarian, I feel like there aren’t a lot of jobs left for me. Certainly not physical jobs. Singing and dancing on stage is a fairly physical job but it doesn’t feel like a real job. It feels like playing dress-ups.
The line that has stayed with you?
It’s a line I said on-screen 30 years ago: “Dad, I dug another hole”. And the reason it’s stuck with me is because every single day, for 30 years, I have heard it repeated back to me as “Dad, I dug a hole”, from either a passing bus or a person at a bus stop or a person in a pub, and every single person thinks they’re the first to think of it. I’ve probably done 100 jobs since then but I will never live that down.
At the time I thought it was so innocuous. But apparently it is something that people feel the need to repeat back to me every single day. It’ll probably be on my tombstone. Spike Milligan has “I told you I was ill”, and mine will be “Dad, I dug a hole”.
Biggest regret?
I’ve made plenty of mistakes but I have no regrets. My parents raised me to appreciate life for everything it has. I’m very blessed. I’ve been raised by a great family, I am raising some pretty amazing kids, and my wife is a spectacular human. I think regrets just slow you down.
Tell us about your turning point.
I was five years old and I went to see my sister and my oldest brother on stage at the Kew High School Theatre in a performance of The Hobbit, and I was so jealous and so enamoured by the sights and sounds and smells of it that I decided then and there that all I ever wanted to do was be an actor.
When I was nine I was in the Toorak Players Children’s Workshop, run by the incredible Ed Bailey and Maureen Bailey, and I was Happy Villager #3 in Man of Steel and my brother was the Man of Steel. I had one line, which was one word: “fantabulous”. I ran it different ways, tried so many different inflections on “fantabulous”. But at the end of the show, when I walked out to what I thought would be my adoring masses, my father turned to me and said, “I couldn’t hear it.”
But I wasn’t deterred because my sister Margaret came up and whispered in my ear, “You were the best.” She did it every time I came offstage. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out she actually said that to all the siblings every time we came offstage.
My kids are 14 and 12 now and they’re very different. My youngest, Beau, is the same as me; he’s wanted to be an actor since he could talk. My oldest, Arlo, would rather stick needles in his eyeballs than be on a stage, so he’s going to have a real job, which will be great. He’ll be the real grown-up, and Beau and I will be prancing around in other people’s clothes for a job.
The artwork or song you wish was yours?
Pink Floyd’s song Time from The Dark Side of the Moon. It is the single greatest rock song ever written. I got into Pink Floyd young. Someone at school told me that if you wait for the [Cowardly] Lion’s third roar when you’re watching The Wizard of Oz and then you start up The Dark Side of the Moon, it all lines up. I think it’s absolute rubbish, made up by someone who was smoking dried-out banana peels.
If you could time-travel, where would you go?
I’d go back to good ol’ 1955. I would take a DeLorean and I would hope to god that my mother didn’t find me attractive and try to hit on me. I saw Back to the Future when I was nine, and my brother Bernie and I decided we were never going to see a better film. I reckon I’ve seen it 100 times and still to this day I get the same joy I got at the Balwyn Cinema in 1985 watching that masterpiece.
Spamalot is at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre from September 16, the Event Centre at The Star Sydney from October 15-18, and western Sydney’s Coliseum Theatre from October 22-25.
Take 7 appears in Spectrum every SaturdaySave
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Robert Moran is Spectrum deputy editor at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners