Camille O'Sullivan

Camille O'Sullivan is an Irish singer, musician, and actress. O'Sullivan is known for her unique, dramatic musical style and covers of artists such as Radiohead, Tom Waits, and David Bowie. As an actress, O'Sullivan has appeared in Mrs Henderson Presents, Rebellion, and Pick Ups.

O'Sullivan was born in London, to Denis O'Sullivan, an Irish racing driver and world champion sailor, and Marie-José, a French artist. She was raised in the town of Passage West, County Cork. After finishing secondary school, O'Sullivan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. She dropped out of her course after a year because she felt "if I study any more that might kill my love for it." On her parents' advice, she enrolled in University College Dublin and studied architecture for four years. Whilst in UCD, she became known as "the singing architect" as she performed in all available university productions and was a member of Dramsoc.

O'Sullivan took a year off from her studies and moved to Berlin, Germany, where she worked at an architect's office. During her time in Berlin, she regularly attended local cabaret clubs and began listening to the narrative music of Hanns Eisler, Kurt Weill and Friedrich Hollaender. Upon returning to Ireland, she met Agnes Bernelle, a mentor who encouraged her to sing, saying "to do this right, you have to be a better actress than a singer, it's all about the story." She graduated from University College Dublin with first class honours and the highest marks at the university in a decade. O'Sullivan then continued to work as an architect, winning an Architectural Association of Ireland award in the process, while continuing to perform in local clubs at night.

In 1999, O'Sullivan was involved in a near-fatal car crash, in which 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 hospitalised 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 on crutches.

After being spotted by Ewen Bremner performing La Clique in The Famous Spiegeltent, O'Sullivan appeared as the vaudeville star Jane in the film Mrs Henderson Presents, directed by Stephen Frears, opposite Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. She and Will Young are also on the soundtrack to the movie.

O'Sullivan has stated:

I feel it’s necessary to not just do things to please ... 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.

Studio albums

• A Little Yearning (2002)
• Changeling (2012)

Live albums

• La Fille Du Cirque (2005)
• Plays Brel Live (2005)
• Live at the Olympia (2008)
• Camille Sings Cave Live (2019)

O'Sullivan was in a relationship with The Waterboys' lead singer Mike Scott, with whom she has a daughter, Lila-Elodie. Since 2014, she has been in a relationship with actor Aidan Gillen.