“I pretty much threw off my apron,” Campbell, who was also cast in the movie that followed two years later, says. “And well, the rest is history.”
Nell Campbell in New York last November on The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s 50th Anniversary Spectacular Tour. Photo / Getty Images
Created, of course, by New Zealand’s Richard O’Brien (who also plays Riff Raff), the show was an overnight hit. The movie that spawned from the musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was a much slower burn but now holds the record as the longest-running film in history.
Late last year, Campbell was part of a 30-date tour across the US celebrating the 50th anniversary of Rocky’s cinematic release, alongside fellow cast members Barry Bostwick (Brad Majors) and Patricia Quinn (Magenta).
Sellout crowds of up to 4000 fans turned up for a fancy dress competition – judged by Campbell – a Q&A, and a screening of the film, accompanied by shadow performers acting out the scenes. In April, another tour kicks off in the UK.
During a quick breather in between, Campbell is flying to Auckland this month as guest of honour at the opening night of a visiting West End production of the stage musical.
“I don’t really know what’s going to be expected of me,” she says. “I’ll find out when I get there. I’d better pack my tap shoes. Anything could happen.”
Nell Campbell as Columbia (from left) with Patricia Quinn (Magenta), Tim Curry (Frank-N-Furter) and Richard O’Brien (Riff Raff) in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Photo / Getty Images
Kristian Lavercombe, an honorary Kiwi who began his acting career here, is playing The Narrator, with Stephen Webb as Frank N. Furter. More typically cast as Riff Raff, Lavercombe holds the world record for the most performances by any actor in the history of the show, with more than 2600 appearances.
After living overseas for more than three decades, Campbell settled back home in Australia in 2005 with her daughter Tilly Campbell (now a 27-year-old DJ living in New York).
Over the years, she’s stayed in touch with pretty much all of the Rocky Horror crew, including Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon – “rhymes with abandon”. Meatloaf, Columbia’s love interest, who Frank-N-Furter kills with an ice axe, died of Covid in 2022.
Campbell is particularly looking forward to catching up with O’Brien during her trip to Auckland. Rocky Horror has remained a big part of his life, too.
Today, he’s in Hamilton for a Valentine’s Day party celebrating the return of his bronze Riff Raff statue to its original position at the redeveloped Embassy Park, where he once frequented late-night horror movie screenings while working as a barber next door.
Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, a documentary by Richard O’Brien’s son Linus, screened at the DocEdge Festival in 2025.
Now in her early 70s, Campbell has had a colourful life and sounds like excellent fun. And I’m not saying that just because she admired my pixie haircut – “It sets off your clothes if you have hair above the jawline” – and my retro brown and mustard-yellow top. “I shan’t forget your giraffe-coloured shirt,” she later emails.
At Kensington Market in London, she once sold clothes from a stall next to Freddie Mercury’s before he was famous and still remembers him fondly. “He was a very loved person. Funny, you know, and as camp as can be.”
Over the years, she has owned a nightclub, Nell’s, in Manhattan, as well as two New York restaurants. In 2003, she made her Broadway debut alongside Antonio Banderas in a revival of the musical Nine and has a one-woman show, All’s Nell that Ends Nell, that she’d love to bring to New Zealand.
Even now, she never tires of hearing how much Rocky Horror has meant to people. During last year’s US tour, a middle-aged man brought along his 70-year-old mother dressed up as Janet in a pink dress, white cardigan and pearls.
At another show, a woman told Campbell that her parents had gone to the film on their first date; she was conceived the same night. “So, her mother lost her virginity twice,” Campbell says, mischievously, referring to the term traditionally used to describe someone who hasn’t been inducted into Rocky Horror yet.
Barry Bostwick as Brad (centre) and Susan Sarandon as Janet (right) play high-school sweethearts who fall under the spell of a transsexual alien, played by Tim Curry (Frank-N-Furter), in the film. Photo / Getty Images
Bostwick, who the rest of the cast considered as nerdy as Brad during the chaotic five-week film shoot, had a later-career revival playing the mayor in the US sitcom Spin City.
He’s been working the Rocky circuit for the past four or five years and Campbell says he’s as handsome as ever – ripping off his suit on stage to reveal fishnet stockings underneath.
When the outrageously high-camp musical first erupted on to the scene, its storyline about transsexual aliens corrupting a pair of innocent all-American high-school sweethearts didn’t seem particularly racy to Campbell, who’d been raised with liberal views.
At one recent show, someone asked about the movie’s orgy scene, filmed in a swimming pool. “My reply was, ‘A wet orgy’s the same as a dry orgy. Everyone gravitates toward the star’.”
Now, with conservatism hardening in the US, she thinks Rocky Horror’s playfulness and its message of acceptance are more needed than ever.
“It’s a licence to express yourself freely and be proud of who you are,” she says. “Whether it’s recognising your sexuality or lost souls realising that not everyone has to be conventional. It just seems to open people up – and they can fly.”
The Rocky Horror Show opens at The Civic in Auckland, February 26-March 8, then tours to Christchurch, March 11-14, and Wellington, March 18-29.
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.