Sarandon, who played the heroine Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, praised Curry as "a funny, sexy, original".

She added: "Even wheelchair bound he continued to be so sweet and generous with his fans. Thank you Tim for meaning so much to so many people."

Curry's longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz confirmed confirmed "passed away peacefully at his home in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles on August 25".

Curry experienced a major stroke in 2012, and had used a wheelchair since.

Australian actress Nell Campbell, who also starred alongside Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Columbia, told the BBC: "I feel like the head of our family has just died because he was the head of the Rocky Horror family."

Welsh actor Luke Evans, who played Frank-N-Furter in a Broadway revival, called Curry "a force, a bright fierce flame, an exquisite charm".

In a letter he recently wrote to Curry, Evans thanked him for his fearlessness and for "creating something so enduring, and for inspiring generations of actors to be a little braver than they thought they could be"

The official Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway account similarly thanked the late actor for "giving the world a little more freedom, a little more fearlessness, and through the tears in our eyes, the courage to BE IT" - a nod to Curry's delivery of the famous line from the musical: "Don't dream it, be it."

In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, writer and composer Richard O'Brien, who co-wrote the musical and film, remembered the actor as "a wonderful man by nature who was also a wonderful performer".

"He never sought attention and never put himself before the roles that he played," O'Brien said. "He was, in short, a good egg and class act."