O'Sullivan was born in London, to Denis O'Sullivan, an Irish racing driver and world champion sailor, and Marie-José, a French artist.[5] She was raised in the town of Passage West, County Cork.[5] After finishing secondary school, O'Sullivan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.[6] She dropped out of her course after a year because she felt "if I study any more that might kill my love for it."[5] On her parents' advice, she enrolled in University College Dublin[6] and studied architecture for four years. Whilst in UCD, she became known as "the singing architect" as she performed in all available university productions[5] and was a member of Dramsoc.[7]
O'Sullivan took a year off from her studies[citation needed] and moved to Berlin, Germany, where she worked at an architect's office. During her time in Berlin, she regularly attended local cabaret clubs[5] 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."[5] She graduated from University College Dublin with first class honours[8] and the highest marks at the university in a decade.[9] O'Sullivan then continued to work as an architect, winning an Architectural Association of Ireland award in the process,[10][11][12] while continuing to perform in local clubs at night.
Career
In 1999, O'Sullivan was involved in a near-fatal car crash, in which she suffered a head fracture,[5] her pelvis was fractured in six places, her hips displaced and the tendons in her hand were shredded.[6] It was months before she could walk again, and she was hospitalised for a year; she still has a metal plate in her pelvis.[5] The accident encouraged her to follow her dream of singing and she performed her first show after the accident while still on crutches.[5]
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.[7]
