Kevin Rodney Sullivan - Early Life and Acting Career

Early Life and Acting Career

Sullivan is a native of San Francisco who began his career as a child actor. He grew up in St. Francis Square in the Fillmore district of San Francisco as the youngest of three children. His father was a bus driver, and his mother was a receptionist for the St. Mary’s hospital. According to Sullivan, he was “one step up from a housing project”. During sixth grade while performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sullivan’s talents were picked up by Ann Brebner, who placed him and his entire class as extras in a movie by Sydney Poitier, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs. This was his first experience with cinema. Brebner would continue to give him auditions for various roles. In 1970, he was picked up for a job in an Alphabits Cereal commercial, making over 7,000 dollars off of that role alone. He continued to obtain small roles in theater productions and doing commercials. Most notably, He got a role as the Master of Ceremonies during a show of Sesame Street that was being filmed live at Golden Gate Park. He was made to “sit on this big garbage can with a microphone and introduce the various skits,” with Jim Henson controlling the puppets.

Sullivan then went on to get a part in a movie called Thumb Tripping, with Meg Foster, following which; he got a part in a series called Wee Pals on the Go. The series was based on a comic strip by Morrie Turner an integrated neighborhood. He played the part of Randy, “a kid with a big afro who loved sports,” according to Sullivan. For Christmas, the producer of that series gave Sullivan his first 8-millimeter camera with which he first experimented in film. He acquired a scholarship to St. Ignatius College Preparatory, which was a Jesuit all-boys high school located in the Sunset District of San Francisco. “The school had 1,200 boys, only forty of them were black,” according to Sullivan. At St. Ignatius, Sullivan was challenged in his class work for the first time, and because of his race, was barred from the theater program as well. “I felt out of place and no one tried to make me feel otherwise,” Says Sullivan.

Though school may have been difficult for him at this time, he was still getting acting jobs, and at one point he joined the Young Conservatory of the American Theater, located in downtown San Francisco; amazingly enough, Annette Bening and Denzel Washington would get their start in acting there as well. As a senior at St. Ignatius, he convinced the theater department to allow him to direct Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, by Lonne Elder; and following this, the school asked him to be the lead in a production of Tea House of the August Moon. This would be the first time in the school’s history that an African American was allowed to play the lead role in any of their productions.

Due to his successes in his acting career, Sullivan applied to the Juilliard School in New York, which emphasizes the arts. John Houseman, who had at the time recently received an Oscar for his role in The Paper Chase, was his interviewer. Houseman’s comments on Sullivan’s abilities at the time were thus: “You have talent, but you’re only seventeen years old. Most of you our students come here after four years of college. I don’t think you’re ready for New York City just yet”. And so, Sullivan ended up at Willamette University in Salem Oregon instead, where he was offered a scholarship through their theater program. He applied to be an English major, as he was growing increasingly interested in writing. “I was a whale in a fish bowl,” says Sullivan, who was quite overqualified for the college’s theater program. He ended up being the lead, Proteus, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, of which he had only auditioned as a supporting role. Sullivan was in quite a few plays following that, and was chosen by the school to direct a production of Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, a play by William Hanley. He then decided to produce a play of his own creation, leaving the school to do it as an independent study. He never went back; partly because he did not want to, and also because his parents divorced after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. He would stay at home to aid her financially in her illness by taking on small acting roles.

By the summer of 1987, his mother cancer had gone into complete remission. Sullivan then left for Los Angeles to try to chase his dream as an actor in Hollywood. He began by working with a friend and fellow actor in Hollywood. From there he began to write scripts. On a particular four day trip to DC, he picked up inspiration for characters in his later works from fellow passengers on his ride who had he spent time talking to. Will his scripts were largely unnoticed; his trip would inspire later works. In the meantime, however, his acting was noticed after he auditioned for small parts in a few movies, this included: Lieutenant in More American Graffiti (1979), Tyrone in Night Shift (1982), March in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and John Grant in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1894).