‘I look to the future now and I know
I can do whatever
I want.. I’ve never been into drugs but now I go, ‘Maybe in my later years’”
Camille O’Sullivan
As she prepares to take to the stage as Édith Piaf, singer Camille O’Sullivan talks about working with convicted murderer Graham Dwyer, drinking whiskey in a cupboard with John Lennon’s son, and the freedom
that comes with getting older
In the post-lockdown world, the rituals of getting ready are a little jarring. Early in the morning, before Camille O’Sullivan is due to meet Weekend, her partner actor Aidan Gillen, asks her, “What are you doing your hair for?” She thought about this and responded, “Because he’s interviewing me in person. It’s an occasion. I felt like I was getting ready for a night out, or getting dressed up to go on a flight away somewhere.”
Both of those sound vastly preferable to navigating north O’Connell Street on a November morning, but it’s a touching effort, particularly since she says she’s “done being enigmatic and always striving to look my best. As you get older, you begin to realise it’s not about that anymore.”
We huddle in the green room at the Gate Theatre, which was the last place O’Sullivan performed (in A Christmas Carol) before Covid shuttered the entertainment industry in Ireland. This time around, she is playing the legendary French singer Édith Piaf in Des Kennedy’s production of Pam Gems’s 1978 play Piaf. It’s surprising to hear that O’Sullivan has never performed the music of The Little Sparrow — one thinks it might have fit the more cabaret vibe of her early years — and she says that she found emulating Piaf’s style “and all those growly ‘r’s’” and that sense of “singing as though your life depended on it” quite intimidating. Despite being part-French, O’Sullivan does not speak the language, which led to a little confusion with some of the lyrics. But the colour and tragedy of Piaf’s short life are rich material to work with. “I think people might hear the title and think that it’s some kind of tribute show and think that it’s going to be ‘lovely’. But the script really reveals where she came from and all about her very tough background. What I love about the show is that it’s not the sugar-coated version of this snger. And the thing I can bring to it is my own interpretation
For a long time, O’Sullivan felt insecure about being renowned as an interpreter of other people’s songs. “I felt embarrassed about that to be honest because we’re Irish; it’s a country of singer-songwriters.” But over the years, by dint of her daring, instinctive covers and reputation as a live performer — dramatically lit shows which turn rock songs into musical plays — she has somehow broken through this stigma. In a voice that ranges from sultry and moody to feral and ragged, she has made her own distinctive mark on songs by greats like David Bowie, Tom Waits, and above all, Nick Cave. Nobody wrings meaning from a lyric quite like O’Sullivan.
The recognition of this has given her confidence over the years, but growing up, a career in music was never a given. She was born in London to Denis, a world-champion sailor, and Marie-José, a French artist, and the family moved to Cork soon after she was born. It was a “weird” upbringing she says, “in that it was very internal. We didn’t meet the neighbours. You stayed in the house and listened to music or played in the garden.”
At secondary school (during which time Mario Rosenstock was her first boyfriend), she performed in plays and musicals and listened to tapes of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. After school, she studied fine art at NCAD but left that course after a year and went to study architecture at UCD instead. She was active in the college’s Dramsoc at a time when people like Conor McPherson and Aidan McArdle were also cutting their teeth
She also busked in Dublin around this time and had a pink bike, which she painted her name on and gained the nickname ‘the singing architect’. “I wanted to be a singer but I didn’t know how to make that happen,” she says. Her parents thought she was “too sensitive” for a career on stage, but when her father saw her perform, he remarked, “It’s like seeing you as a little child again, it’s so vivid.” And I think he was right: singing was part of holding onto some kind of childlike wonder.”
While still a student, she moved to Berlin and got work experience in an architecture firm by day and by night performing in clubs, soaking up the music of people like Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill, who would appear in her repertoire. Back in Ireland, she got historically high marks in her architecture exams and went on to a successful career in the profession at a time — the 1990s — when Dublin was changing dramatically (many of her tutors were involved in the regeneration of Temple Bar). “I worked in a lot of places, some great, some awful. When you’re climbing the career ladder and working late nights, you can wonder what’s it all about. Every Christmas, I would think to myself, I’m not happy, I know there’s something else.”
One of her colleagues in those years was Graham Dwyer. Years later, when O’Sullivan heard that he had been charged with the murder of Elaine O’Hara (for which he would be convicted in 2015), “my head kind of exploded. Because you think you have a good sense of how to get the measure of someone.. I had dinners with him and I travelled with him to work all around the country.
“We worked beside each other for a few years. So we knew each other well. I trusted him. He was on Facebook with me too. But there were people who were much closer than me...”
Was she fascinated by the darkness in the story? “For sure. I’ve spent my life ever after going (suspiciously), ‘Hmm he’s definitely a Graham Dwyer, that one.’” He (Dwyer) was a very righteous person. Not in a religious sense, but quite moralistic. It’s just frightening that someone could lead a double life to that extent.”
In 1997, she met Feargal Murray, the man who would become her long-time musical director (they’re like each other’s “right and left arm” she says) and they had a relationship but split in 1999. O’Sullivan was involved in a car crash a week later. That accident caused a range of terrible injuries, including fractures to her skull and pelvis, but it was during the recovery from this that her desire to leave the safety net of her architecture career and become a singer finally crystallised. It wasn’t easy at the start, and she recalls having to take dispiriting corporate gigs. “People would be eating canapés in front of my face and turning to the person next to them to go, ‘Judith, who’s this disaster?’ And I would
have to keep in my head that I was being paid five times what I normally earned.”
Such indignities did not last and she was soon storming the Edinburgh Fringe, Glastonbury, the Sydney Opera House and getting invited to perform at the Meltdown Festival by Yoko Ono. That invitation came soon after her daughter, Lila, was born. “I was breastfeeding and I was really wondering, ‘Can I do this?’ But I was falling apart, so I really didn’t care and just went for it. I remember Sean Lennon was there and he asked me to have a whiskey in a cupboard with him so Yoko (his mother) wouldn’t see. It was one of those pinch-me moments, because everything else was going wrong but I was able to take in the fun of it, and the fact that I had my baby was wonderful.”
O’Sullivan had an on-off relationship with Lila’s father, Mike Scott of Waterboys fame, but they split after she was born. “It was hard. But I think it was made easier with her (Lila). I remember being in Waterstones or there was some bookshop that I think I was reading self-help books with titles like When a Woman breaks up with a Man. I had loads of them in my hand. And somebody came up to me going, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans.’ I was crying, but I said, ‘That’s great. I’m just buying these books for a friend who’s going through a tough time.’”
A few months later, she was to find love again with Gillen. They had met two years previously on a boat, which both were taking after planes were grounded due to the Icelandic volcano, and had a brief interaction then, but met again, after Lila was born, at a show at the Olympia. Gillen emailed her afterward and, sensing the potential romantic sparks that were about to fly, she thought, “Actor. Singer — No!” But both felt the attraction, and after further emails, went on a few dates, including one swimming at the Forty Foot.
“I think what was in my favour was I wasn’t trying in the way I would’ve been before I’d had my baby. I would’ve been dressing up and putting makeup on and trying to be sexy. I was like, ‘I’m going to look like I’d come out the back of the bush.’ And he (Gillen) was amazing. He said, ‘I know she (Lila) means everything to you and we’ll travel everywhere with her.’”
Gillen, who has two sons from a previous relationship, is stepfather to Lila. I wonder if he and O’Sullivan are considering marriage. “I scare him because I’m addicted to Say Yes To The Dress. It (marriage) has been mentioned on and off. My daughter has asked (if they’ll do it). But I think I have a funny feeling about it as a woman. I love the idea of it, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t look great in a wedding dress, but I also feel that if we did that, things would be sealed or over for me and my life would’ve happened.”
Journalists trying to explain the incredible effect of O’Sullivan on stage have compared her to people like Patti Smith, Sally Bowles and PJ Harvey. But Gillen has another surprising one to add to the mix: “He calls me Mad Mary,” she tells me, laughing to herself. Readers of a certain age will remember the pearl-wearing woman who danced up and down O’Connell street in the 1980s, and there is a touch of that devil-may-care attitude in O’Sullivan. “I am a little eccentric,” she says. “A few people have remarked on that.”
Gillen, O’Sullivan and Lila spent lockdown together at a rented house in Dublin. It was a period that brought mixed emotions for O’Sullivan. There was the fun of eating and drinking too much and online shopping binges. But she was also suffering from “daily” physical pain. “Drinking was the thing that helped me get by,” she jokes, reluctant to go into specifics about her condition. “I hadn’t been well. I needed surgery, and it was a big change in my life. But I was ill for the year before, with constant tests and stuff. So I’m still going through that, but it’s just on top of being stuck. My father was ill at the time himself, so we were both in and out of hospital during a time we didn’t want to be in a hospital.”
She seems to have recovered well and, as well as the upcoming run at the Gate, she will also perform in her own show at the 3Olympia on November 26. She’s relishing the return to the stage and tells Weekend, “There is something great about having survived this long, still holding on. As a performer, so much is about how you look, but I look to the future now and I know I can do whatever I want — get pink hair, become a rapper, wear gold sneakers. I’ve never been into drugs but now I go, ‘Maybe in my later years.’ I just try to find things to laugh at. Humour about myself has got me through a lot of life.”
‘Piaf’ is on at the Gate Theatre from December 7 to January 28. Tickets from gatetheatre.ie or from the box office on 01 874 4045
Words by
Donal Lynch
Photography by
Ruth Medjber
It’s just frightening that someone could lead a double life to that extent
My father was ill at the time himself, so we were both in and out of hospital during a time we didn’t want to be in a hospital
Camille O'Sullivan and Aidan Gillen. Picture: Arthur Carron
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