Camille O'Sullivan: 'Cork will always be my home'
Camille O'Sullivan: an artist, a singer, an architect, an actor - and always a Corkonian.
When Camille O’Sullivan was small, her Cork home rocked to the music of Jacques Brel, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones.
Her family shared her passion for music which often reflected their diverse roots. The singer and actor’s mother is French, while her father — a third-generation Corkonian — grew up in England. Little wonder that Brel and Bowie resided harmoniously together on the O’Sullivan family’s record player.
She recalls how her parents, who worked from the family home, would form her first musical memories. Through her sister’s bedroom walls, she remembers hearing the music of Pink Floyd and David Bowie for the first time. “We had Irish music, English, French, classical, Rolling Stones, Beatles — it was almost like the language that we had was more through music than anything.”
Years later, as Camille fostered her own music career, it was the songs of Brel, Bowie, Nick Cave, Radiohead, and Edith Piaf which made the most sense to her as she took to the stage. Interpreting each song in her unique and powerful way, the singer and actor treats every one as an intense emotional journey.
A recent, critically acclaimed run of the play where she celebrated the life and work of Piaf - regarded as one of the all-time greats — felt all the more personal because of her family ties.
“It was a big moment for mum and dad, and for me, actually, when I did the Piaf thing this time around,” she said, adding that it reminded her of visits to her grandmother at Christmas and summer in Bordeaux.
“Unfortunately, I’m not fluent in French. So I had to phonetically learn all those songs because I was more scared of my mother than people coming to review me because my mother is a French teacher. I was like: ‘Jesus, if I get this wrong!’” she smiles.
Camille moved to Ireland as a young girl and was raised in Passage. For her dad, the move to Cork felt like a kind of homecoming. “My dad is third-generation Cork and he was brought up in England. His great-grandfather was from Dunmanway, and when we were born, my mum kind of eloped back from France.” A racing driver, they met when he was competing in an event in Monaco, and later moved from London to Passage when she was a young girl.
Though she was always interested in music and drama — and was a member of Cork Youth Theatre — Camille worked as a portrait painter and an architect before pursuing a singing career.
Her architecture work brought her to Berlin, where she fell in love with the cabaret club scene, and the singers who interpreted classic songs, putting their own stamp on them in the process. One of them, Agnes Bernelle, advised Camille that she would need to be an actress as well as a singer, which is perhaps why she has always been a draw to casting agents as a stage and screen performer on top of her singing career.
In the years since, Camille’s ability to get to the heart and core of a song has won her a strong fan base at home and abroad. She was one of the original cast members of the Olivier Award-winning and has sold out performances to audiences at such iconic venues as Sydney Opera House and London’s Royal Festival Hall. She performed Cave — which she describes as a love letter to singer-songwriter Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds — in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
More recently she brought the legendary French singer Edith Piaf to Irish audiences. Piaf by Pam Gems traced the chanteuse’s life in all its grit and glory, from her days singing to survive poverty on the streets of Belleville in Paris, to the upmarket clubs of New York.
Her TV and film work includes roles in British drama and as Countess Markievicz in the drama series . This week she returns to the big screen in , a film-noir-style thriller. Set largely in the nighttime streets of Dublin, it centres on the titular private detective (Aidan Gillen) who is hired by a wealthy widow to trace her missing granddaughter.
The movie sees her work with fellow actor and real-life partner Gillen. She plays Lexie Finnegan, a mysterious woman who reveals more about the detective’s life and their relationship over the course of their encounters. Camille has recorded a track for the movie, and — in a nice nod to their relationship — got to wear the dress she wore on her first date with Gillen in a scene in the film.
“That particular dress with the little bows was the first one I wore on our first date. So it was nice to capture it on screen.” She and Aidan had met briefly on a ferry trip and at a gig before the actor, whose high-profile credits include , and , got in contact with her to ask her out.
Gillen is currently playing Frank Kinsella in the second series of RT��’s , the gritty series revolving around a Dublin family involved in a gangland war.
She knew he worked as an actor, but didn’t realise at the time how prolific he was. “When I met him first, I didn’t know what he did because I didn’t have a television. To be honest, it was good I didn’t know what he did because I would have totally messed it up,” she says of their initial courtship.
She playfully recalls how she decided to up the ante with her suggestion for their next date. “On the second date, I said: ‘Let’s go for a swim in Killiney beach’. My friends laughed at that. I thought, well, if he can withstand the cold, we’ll get to see how it goes!’” By the time they first met, Camille had become a mum to daughter Leila, who is now aged nine.
“He was wonderful. He was especially wonderful with my daughter, who was just so little then, she would have been a year. He said: ‘I know you don’t want to be separated from her so we’ll meet in the park, and we’ll go on dates with her’.” They have been together since, and though they have collaborated on projects before, Camille found that she saw her partner in a different light while filming scenes together.
“It was lovely,” she says of their experience filming . “I’m more of a nervous person than him. And I’ve done film, but not as much. It was especially interesting because you’re playing a love interest. After you’re together for eight years or so, it’s a funny thing because you look at each other in a different way on screen. And you can understand why people get together probably on film sets because the whole thing is quite intense. It makes a difference from putting the rubbish out on a Tuesday!” she laughs.
Shooting mostly at nighttime in Dublin’s city centre gave Camille a new view of the city, as the nighttime streets were quiet. She has always loved the city but remains “a Corkonian through and through”.
That was underlined to her recently on a trip back home, where she returned to her former school - Ashton School in Blackrock — to meet with fellow past pupils and former teachers on a special anniversary.
“I always think Cork people are like babies — you put them at the table, and they just chat, chat, chat. I went home recently for the 50th anniversary of our school, and I met all my teachers and then some of the pupils, and I just loved being back. Sometimes I feel out of sorts in Dublin, because of the chattiness or the way that I do things.
“The man who helped me with my maths because I had to learn maths off by heart, especially for architecture, Adrian Landon, became the principal and he was amazing. I met all my teachers, and none of them looked different. It was such a pleasure. I’m a bit of a home bird, I’m quite attached to things and quite sentimental.
“And it was so amazing to go and say to people: ‘Thank you’. It was amazing to be able to do that, and to have a chat.”
- Barber opens in Irish cinemas on April 14
