Success Quote by Richard O'Brien

There is a particular kind of trap that comes with making a cult object: you don’t just play a part, you become a reference point. When Richard O’Brien talks about “something like Rocky” being “indefinable,” he’s naming the weird afterlife of The Rocky Horror Show and its film version: a project that didn’t merely succeed, but mutated into a participatory ritual. “Indefinable” is doing heavy lifting here. It gestures at the fact that Rocky can’t be summed up as a genre, a plot, or even a performance; it’s a vibe, a code, a community. Once your work becomes a shorthand for transgression, camp, and chosen-family theater, it stops belonging solely to its creators.

The second half - “it always becomes difficult to lose that” - is less nostalgia than occupational realism. O’Brien isn’t complaining so much as admitting the permanence of cultural branding. For an actor, especially one tied to a singular phenomenon, the public doesn’t want range; it wants continuity. The line hints at a double bind: Rocky is the role that opened doors and the label that narrows the hallway.

Context matters: Rocky’s legacy is built on repetition (midnight screenings, audience callbacks, cosplay). That kind of fandom doesn’t let you move on quietly. O’Brien’s phrasing suggests a soft acceptance of being “stuck” in something he also can’t fully define - because the audience finished the work for him.