Camille O'Sullivan
Encyclopedia
Camille O'Sullivan is a Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 singer, actress, and entertainer. (She is not to be confused with the French singer, songwriter, and actress Camille Dalmais who also signs her recordings as Camille.)

Background

Camille O'Sullivan, the daughter of Denis (an Irish racing driver and World Champion sailor) and Marie-José (a French artist) was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 but was raised in the village of Passage West
Passage West
Passage West is a port town in County Cork, Ireland, situated on the west bank of Cork Harbour. It is some 10 km from Cork city, separated by the green belt from the urban sprawl of Douglas and Rochestown. The town has many services, amenities and social outlets...

, near Cork, Ireland
Cork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

. She studied painting for a year at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, but left her studies because she felt "if I study any more that might kill my love for it." With her parents' advice, she enrolled in University College Dublin. She became known as the singing architect as she acted and performed in all available university productions and was a member of Dramsoc.

She took a year off her studies and took a job in an architect's office in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 where she regularly attended the cabaret clubs. and began listening to the narrative music of Eisler, Kurt Weill and Hollaender. Upon returning to Ireland, she met Agnes Bernelle
Agnes Bernelle
Agnes Bernelle was an actress and singer, long-based in the UK for much of her career, although she later settled in Ireland. Her family had fled Berlin in 1936...

 a mentor to her who sang the songs of Brecht and Weill, she encouraged her to continue singing saying, "to do this right, you have to be a better actress than a singer, it's all about the story."

She graduated in Architecture with First Class honours and the highest marks at the university in a decade with several scholarships during her time in UCD. She then worked as an architect during the day, winning an Architectural Association of Ireland award in the process, while continuing to perform in clubs at night. As a painter she has also exhibited in the National Portrait Awards and th Royal Hibernian Academy. In 1999, she was involved in a near-fatal car crash where she suffered a head fracture, her pelvis was fractured in six places, her hips displaced and the tendons in her hand were shredded. It was months before she could walk again, and she was hospitalized for a year; she still has a metal plate in her pelvis .

The accident encouraged her to follow her dream of singing and she performed her first show after the accident while still in crutches.

O'Sullivan is not a classically trained singer or musician, although she plays piano, and has stated that this stopped her from having the confidence to begin a singing career for many years. In her early career she got around this lack of experience by working with brilliant musicians who were able to adapt to her singing style, which focuses more on acting, emotion and 'light and shade', than technique or strict tempo.

Career

O'Sullivan has performed in sell-out seasons in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 (including the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...

 with her award winning shows and also with the ensemble off Broadway hit show and Olivier Award winning 'La Clique' (known as 'Absinthe' in America). She has performed her 'Dark Angel' show for a six week West End run at the Apollo Theatre London, the legendary Roundhouse, Hal Wilner's Rogues Gallery with Tim Robbins, Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....

, Sarah Blasko
Sarah Blasko
Sarah Elizabeth Blaskow , is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. After fronting Sydney-based band Acquiesce from the mid-1990s, Blasko developed her solo career from 2002. In 2007, she won the 'Best Pop Release' for What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have at the ARIA Music Awards, which...

 and Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...

 at the Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features around 80 events including contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks...

 2010, supported Jools Holland
Jools Holland
Julian Miles "Jools" Holland OBE, DL is an English pianist, bandleader, singer, composer, and television presenter. He was a founder of the band Squeeze and his work has involved him with many artists including Sting, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, The Who, David Gilmour and Bono.Holland is a...

 tour including the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....

.

After being spotted by Ewen Bremner
Ewen Bremner
-Early life:Bremner was born in Edinburgh, the son of two art teachers. He attended Davidson's Mains Primary School and Portobello High School. He originally wanted to be a circus clown, but was offered a chance in show business by television director Richard D. Brooks. One of his first notable...

 (Spud from Trainspotting
Trainspotting (film)
Trainspotting is a 1996 British satirical/drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life...

) in La Clique
La Clique
La Clique was an award-winning cabaret/variety show with Australian roots first conceived for the 2004 edition of The Edinburgh Festival Fringe...

 in The Famous Spiegeltent  , O'Sullivan co-starred as the vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 star Jane in the film Mrs Henderson Presents, directed by Stephan Frears, opposite Dame Judi Dench
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

 and Bob Hoskins
Bob Hoskins
Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

. She and Will Young
Will Young
William Robert "Will" Young is a British singer-songwriter and actor who came to prominenceafter winning the 2002 inaugural series of the British music contest Pop Idol, making him the first winner of the now-worldwide Idols-format franchise...

 are also on the soundtrack to the movie. She has appeared singing with Damien Rice
Damien Rice
Damien Rice is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician and record producer who plays guitar, piano, clarinet and percussion....

, Jack L, Duke Special
Duke Special
Duke Special, real name Peter Wilson, is a songwriter and performer based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A piano-based songwriter with a romantic style and a warm, distinctly accented voice, he has a distinctive look, with his long dreadlocks, eyeliner and outfits he describes as "hobo chic"...

, Tim Robbins
Tim Robbins
Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon...

 and Shane MacGowan
Shane MacGowan
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan is an Irish musician and singer, best known as the original singer and songwriter of The Pogues.-History:...

.

As much storyteller as singer, Camille has a respected international reputation for her dark dramatic interpretations of the songs of Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

, Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...

, Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

, Dillie Keane
Dillie Keane
Louise M. "Dillie" Keane is an Olivier Award-nominated actress, singer and comedienne. She is perhaps best known as one third of the comedy cabaret trio Fascinating Aida since its 1983 inception, but she has also had a prominent solo career.-Theatre and Fascinating Aida:Keane was nominated for a...

, Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, and Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

 . The productions 'La Fille Du Cirque','The Dark Angel' and 'Chameleon" were self directed with the emphasis on inhabiting the character of each story,revealing different aspects emotionally dark and light, lending to her chameleon like quality on stage- In her early days she concentrated on more traditional 'narrative storytelling' with Eisler
Eisler
Eisler is a German surname that may refer to:* Barry Eisler, American novelist* Brenda Eisler, Canadian long jumper* Georg Eisler, Austrian painter* Gerhart Eisler, German journalist and politician* Hanns Eisler, German composer...

, Weill
Weill
Weill is an educational institution affiliated with Cornell University, named after Sanford I. Weill and may refer to:* Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, research institute located on Cornell University's Ithaca, NY campus...

 and chanteuse fayre Edith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 and says that she may have alienated some by making the switch to interpreting darker contemporary songs which originated, in the most part, from male artists:

“I feel it’s necessary to not just do things to please,” she says. “I sometimes worried about that in the past. I thought, ‘If I don’t want to alienate people, I shouldn’t perform difficult provocative dark songs’. But I would have given up if I’d stayed doing Dietrich and Piaf in a studied way, that cafe-cabaret version, where you’re making it easy instead of pushing yourself.”

In 1994,she performed in 'Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris' at University College, Dublin  which increased her passion for Brel's work, in particular the songs Amsterdam and Next, the latter being one of the climactic moments of her Spiegletent 2007 performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and both appearing on her 'Fille Du Cirque' album.

Both of these songs are told from a male perspective, with Next ('Au Suivant') telling the story of a young soldier who loses his virginity in a 'mobile army whorehouse, gift for the army, free of cost' and is haunted for the remainder of his life both by the horrors of war and by his disgust for the sexual experiences. However, O'Sullivan is not deterred from performing them, commenting that she sings them in the lowest key possible for her voice in order to retain the drama and tone of the originals, while finding a character within the song that she can inhabit, such as the prostitute an sailor in 'Amsterdam'.

In 2007 Camille played 'Beggar Woman' in the 'Best Opera Production' of 2007 (Irish Times Irish Theatre Award), Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd' at The Gate Theatre, Dublin (“This production is a miracle…gripping and musically brilliant”
Guardian).

Camille performed in the Acoustic Tent at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008, Latitiude Festival 2009, Later With Jools 2008, Interview with David Frost 2010, Barbican Nick Drake tribute 2009 with Martha Wainright, Vashti Bunyan, Harper Simon, Stuart Murdoch and Blurs Graham Coxon, Barbican Brel evening with Marc Almond, Momus, Arno and Arthur H, and she also conducted a residency at the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh as part of the Festival Fringe.

Style

The resurgence of the Burlesque movement in the UK (also known as Neo-Burlesque) in the noughties has been attributed to Camille, as well as to Dita Von Teese
Dita Von Teese
Dita Von Teese is an American burlesque dancer, model, costume designer, author and actress.-Early life:...

 and Immodesty Blaize
Immodesty Blaize
Immodesty Blaize is a British burlesque dancer who performs internationally. She was crowned Reigning Queen of Burlesque in June 2007 at the Las Vegas Burlesque Hall of Fame formerly known as Exotic World.- Rise to fame :Her ethnic heritage is Croatian, Russian and Irish...

, but, although they do share similarities such as 50's style costumes and corsets, black hair which is set into curls, red lipstick, and the use of large props such as swings and oversized champagne glasses, Camille has emphasised that she is part theatre, part rock and weimar Cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 , and that while Burlesque is concentrated on the female form, she is a live singer, and now recording artist, first and foremost. However, her renown as a sensual and titillating performer, who changed her costumes mid-set behind a lavish screen in her 'Fille Du Cirque' tours, and sports red, glittery high heels for her version of Kirsty MacColl
Kirsty MacColl
Kirsty Anna MacColl was an English singer-songwriter.MacColl scored several pop hits from the early 1980s to the early 1990s...

's 'In These Shoes', means that the confusion continues.

In a further contrast to Von Teese, who states in her book 'The Art Of The Teese' that she drinks no more than 'one glass of champagne' on the night of a performance, Camille famously sips red wine throughout her performances, attributing this characteristic to her Irish roots.

O'Sullivan has become a popular commodity in advertising and the media, particularly in Ireland, where she advertised Hennessy Cognac under the 'Pure Character' campaign, with the tagline 'Singing In English, French and sometimes German, I like to become different characters, showing each part of myself whether vulnerable, angry, harsh or fun' and titling her 'Camille O'Sullivan - Performer'. She has appeared on the cover of Time Out London,the Sunday Independent's 'Life' Magazine twice, once for an article named 'My Fall Into Decadence', and the other time,'Dublin's Dens Of Desire'

She suffers from stage fright before every performance, saying "if you can use pure nerves as a fuse you can really take off like a rocket."

February 2009 - nominated for Best Irish Female Music Artist Award in the Irish Music Meteor Awards.Previously she has been awarded Best Artist Melbourne Theatre Awards 2005, Best Music Brighton Festival 2005,2006, Spirit of the Edinburgh Fringe 2007, Best Show Dublin Fringe Festival 2007,2009 and as ensemble in la Clique and Olivier Award for Best Entertainment 2009. She shall be performing her show in the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank London Dec 2010 and is currently collaborating with the Royal Shakespeare company on a project for 2011.

Discography

EP

Camille
  1. In These Shoes
  2. Are You The One?
  3. The Devil's Workshop
  4. God Is In The House


Albums

A Little Yearning
  1. A Little Yearning
  2. Ami Pleurer
  3. Oxygen
  4. Little Water Song
  5. Innocent when you dream (featuring Jack L)
  6. Marieke
    Marieke (song)
    Marieke is a 1962 song by the Belgian singer Jacques Brel.-The song:In Marieke, Brel sings about a Flemish girl, Marieke, whom he once loved and lived "between the towers of Bruges and Gent"...

  7. Whatever Lola Wants
  8. Pirate Jenny
  9. Masochism Tango
  10. Lilac Wine
  11. Song For Old Lovers
  12. Amsterdam
  13. A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Live)


Live Albums

La Fille Du Cirque
  1. God Is In The House
  2. The Devil's Workshop
  3. A Good Man
  4. Song For Old Lovers
  5. Next
  6. Are You The One?
  7. Amsterdam
  8. In These Shoes
  9. The Mercy Seat
  10. Look Mummy
  11. Vesoul
  12. Moonage Daydream
  13. Marieke
  14. Jackie
  15. Is That All There Is?


Live At The Olympia
  1. Take It With Me
  2. The Bulls
  3. No Surprises
  4. Sugar In My Bowl
  5. Suffragette City
  6. Rock N Roll Suicide
  7. Moritat Von Makie Messer
  8. Misery Is The River
  9. People Aint No Good
  10. Five Years
  11. In These Shoes
  12. Ne Me Quitte Pas
  13. The End Is Not The End
  14. Via Con Me

External links

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