In the book she’s very much his muse, as well as his tormentor. For the film, Rob Reiner told me not to take Annie home with me at night, but that wasn’t possible. When I read Misery, I fell into the hole with Paul. In order to accomplish that, he has to fall into “the hole in the paper”. He has to write the story chapters for Annie in order to stay alive. In the book, after Paul is hobbled, he realises he has become Scheherazade, and thus begins The Thousand and One Nights of Paul Sheldon. I once ran into him and said, “Stephen, how are you?” And – he’s quite tall – he looked down at me and said, “You’re in the pink.” Which was something that could come out of one of his characters’ mouths. I love his gift for observation of human beings, his characters. ‘His characters are unique and quirky, like he is’ Kathy Bates (Annie Wilkes in Misery) River was such a wonderful actor, but he didn’t quite get it, and I took him aside and I said, “You know, River, you don’t have to tell me what it is, but I just want you to think about an adult in your life who let you down.” And then we did the scene again, and that made him cry, and that’s the shot. The scene where they’re at the campfire, and Chris is talking about the milk money being stolen and him getting blamed for it when really it was the teacher that had done it – we did that scene a couple of times. I took the kids river-rafting, it was just really fun. The making of it, being up in Oregon for 60 days with these young kids, was like being at camp, this otherworldly experience, it was like reliving my youth. He says, “My father doesn’t love me,” and Chris replies, “No, he just doesn’t know you, he does love you.” And I’m literally crying as I’m writing the scene. I remember writing that scene by myself in the hotel room in Oregon.

There’s the scene where they find the body, and Gordie is sitting there and he starts to cry, because he hadn’t cried at his brother’s funeral, because his parents were so bereft, he couldn’t really express himself. And I started relating to it as how I felt, vis-à-vis my own father – he was focused on his work and sometimes I felt like I was not there. But I looked into it further and thought, “What if I make him the main character and make it about his transformation?” And I started picking things out of the book, how his father and his mother were bereft over the fact that his brother had died and Gordie was feeling like an outsider they weren’t really looking at him. In the book, Gordie was an observer of the whole thing, the writer – basically, Stephen King. Jesus, does anyone?” That to me was what resonated. To me, what was so good about the story was that it is real things that boys do, and experiences that they have, which is summed up at the end when Gordie says, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. For Stand By Me, I just focused on the characters and this experience that Stephen King actually had when he was young. Stephen King’s obvious reputation is as a great horror writer, but to me, it was always the quality of his writing – the character development and the dialogue. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O’Connell and Corey Feldman in Stand By Me. ‘Making it was like reliving my youth’ Rob Reiner (d irector of Stand By Me, 1986 and Misery, 1990)

And a guy saw me and stood up and said, “I’ve seen the original Pennywise!” And I said, “Well, good for you.” I think whatever scares the pants off you when you’re a child is an image that always stays with you. I went out to dinner last night, and I’m currently in a wheelchair because I had a stroke five years ago. But some people are obsessed with Pennywise. I was very disappointed by the ending, when I turned into a rather unconvincing spider. ” The boy playing Georgie yanked his hand away and said, “You’re scaring me!” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m supposed to.” There’s the classic scene where little Georgie floats his paper boat down the gutter and puts his hand down to try and get it back, and is grabbed by Pennywise, who says: “Down here we float. And I could see what fun it would be to be that scary. Pennywise always understood what each character was scared of, and provided it. I read It when I got the role and I thought it was wonderfully scary, because clowns are scary.

I think he knows that everyone is vulnerable to something. He’s got a great sense of how children think and speak. I love that he is more likely to quote Springsteen than Shakespeare. I’d read most of his books before doing It he’s such a great storyteller.

Tim curry characters