A gifted architect who graduated with the best marks University College Dublin had seen in a decade, Camille O’Sullivan was nearly killed in a car crash in 1999. After a year of rehab, she took to the stage and has since become an award winning cabaret star.
Seeing Camille O’Sullivan perform for the first time is a quite unforgettable experience.
She interprets the songs of Nick Cave, Jaques Brel, Tom Waits and others. But she also growls at the audience. She purrs and meows at them. She clicks her teeth at them.
She gets down in among them, purring and snarling, sitting on laps, stroking hair, cheerfully explaining, “If you’re scared, that’s when I’m gonna come for you.”
Her ball gown comes off to reveal an outfit altogether more raunchy.
“I get totally uninhibited,” Camille says of her stage persona. “My friends say you’re a nutter, and I do stuff that I wouldn’t dream of doing in my private life rolling around in people’s laps but I like being a child up there, and I also like being a woman up there.”
The most affecting moments in Camille’s generally raucous roller coaster of a performance are the slow, sad numbers. Look Mummy (no hands) is a song about a little girl on a fairground ride, watched by her mother. By the end of the song, her mother has gone and the girl is alone.
As Camille sings, tears trickle down her face, melting streaky tracks through her thick make up. Hers aren’t the only wet eyes in the house.
“I like the notion that once you’re up there your vulnerability is what makes you. You’re inhabiting that song. You’re like an open valve to the audience.
“Some people love that passion and others, unfortunately, think it’s put on. There are only a few songs that have that impact on me, and those are songs very dear to my heart.Look Mummy”I can’t perform those songs straight away. By the time I do a song like Look Mummy both myself and the audience need to have reached a certain emotional point.
“I love the enigmatic qualities at the beginning, but I also like to show myself unravelling.”
The daughter of a French artist and an Irish racing driver, Camille was born in London but raised in a village near Cork. She’s coy about her age, “I take after all the women in my family,” she says, adding with a throaty laugh, “I’m in my 30s and I hate it!”
She studied art for a year, but left because “I felt if I study any more that might kill my love for it.”
Instead she studied architecture at University College Dublin.
“Singing wasn’t part of any plan for my career,” she continues. “I was into amateur dramatics at college but it wasn’t until I went to live in Berlin that I was introduced to the kind of storytelling music that I do now.”
When Camille returned to Ireland she met the German-born actress and signer Agnes Bernelle, one of the last great cabaret performers. Then in her 70s, she encouraged Camille to continue singing, advising her, “To do this right you have to be a better actress than a singer, it’s all about the story.”
“That was a big eye opener for me. I had a passion for singing that kind of music and wanted to make a career out of it, which isn’t such a great realisation when you’ve spent all those years studying architecture.”
Camille completed her degree, graduating not only top of her class, but with the highest marks anyone had achieved in a decade.
Over the next four years she carved out a successful career as an architect, “I’ve designed buildings and bits of buildings from Cork to Dublin to Galway.
“Even now I’ll be driving through somewhere and I’ll think, ‘Did I design that overhang? Is that roof one of mine?'”
Her work won her an Architectural Association of Ireland Award, and she combined days in the office with nights performing in clubs.
She felt unable to abandon the stability and success of her profession for the uncharted waters of a singing career and it took a sudden and near fatal event to finally shock her into diving into the deep end.Car crashIn 1999 a car crash left her hovering near death. Her skull was fractured, her pelvis was fractured in six places, her hips were displaced and the tendons in her hands were shredded.
It was months before she could walk again and she was in hospital for a year. She has a metal plate in her hand and steel pins in her legs.
“That was definitely a massive turning point in my life,” she reflects. “It was a big wake up call. Before that I didn’t have the confidence to take the plunge. When the accident happened it was such a momentous thing that everything became very clear to me, at least for a few months.
“Suddenly it made sense to say, what are you doing wasting your time, even if you are scared. I had to learn to walk again and to use my hands again.
“It took months. Long enough to decide that once I’m back in action I’m going to do this thing that I love.”La CliqueShe performed her first show on crutches, and went on to star with the award winning off-Broadway ensemble La Clique. She’s since carved out a tremendously successful cabaret show that has seen her sell out in Ireland, New York, the UK and Australia, including Sydney Opera House.
Even a decade and more after the crash occurred, and with years of sell-out performances and plaudits from critics and her peers, Camille still says she feels frightened before she goes on stage.
“I get nervous. It’s in my nature I think. Once I’m on I’m fine my public persona takes over from the private one. It’s not obvious but I feel it. Sometimes on tour or just generally I feel worried that things are going to come crashing down around me.
“When that happens I try to hold on to the person that came out of the crash.”
Camille completed her degree, graduating not only top of her class, but with the highest marks anyone had achieved in a decade.
Over the next four years she carved out a successful career as an architect, “I’ve designed buildings and bits of buildings from Cork to Dublin to Galway.
“Even now I’ll be driving through somewhere and I’ll think, ‘Did I design that overhang? Is that roof one of mine?'”
Her work won her an Architectural Association of Ireland Award, and she combined days in the office with nights performing in clubs.
She felt unable to abandon the stability and success of her profession for the uncharted waters of a singing career and it took a sudden and near fatal event to finally shock her into diving into the deep end.Car crashIn 1999 a car crash left her hovering near death. Her skull was fractured, her pelvis was fractured in six places, her hips were displaced and the tendons in her hands were shredded.
It was months before she could walk again and she was in hospital for a year. She has a metal plate in her hand and steel pins in her legs.
“That was definitely a massive turning point in my life,” she reflects. “It was a big wake up call. Before that I didn’t have the confidence to take the plunge. When the accident happened it was such a momentous thing that everything became very clear to me, at least for a few months.
“Suddenly it made sense to say, what are you doing wasting your time, even if you are scared. I had to learn to walk again and to use my hands again.
“It took months. Long enough to decide that once I’m back in action I’m going to do this thing that I love.”La CliqueShe performed her first show on crutches, and went on to star with the award winning off-Broadway ensemble La Clique. She’s since carved out a tremendously successful cabaret show that has seen her sell out in Ireland, New York, the UK and Australia, including Sydney Opera House.
Even a decade and more after the crash occurred, and with years of sell-out performances and plaudits from critics and her peers, Camille still says she feels frightened before she goes on stage.
“I get nervous. It’s in my nature I think. Once I’m on I’m fine my public persona takes over from the private one. It’s not obvious but I feel it. Sometimes on tour or just generally I feel worried that things are going to come crashing down around me.
“When that happens I try to hold on to the person that came out of the crash.”