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Brad Sullivan

Brad Sullivan was an American film, television and stage actor whose career was rooted in the theatre. Born in Chicago on November 18, 1931, he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before attending the University of Maine, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. Acting soon became his direction, and after touring with a stage company, he moved to New York City to study at the American Theatre Wing. Sullivan made his Off-Broadway debut in Red Roses for Me in 1961. He later joined the London company of South Pacific, beginning a stage career that moved comfortably between musicals and dramatic work. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he appeared in two New York Shakespeare Festival productions as well as Václav Havel’s The Memorandum. In 1971, Sullivan played Rip Cord opposite Adrienne Barbeau’s Cookie Kovac in the musical Stag Movie. The following year brought his feature-film debut in Parades, a military drama later re-released as The Line. His early screen work also included a CBS television adaptation of David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones, a black comedy concerning a Vietnam War veteran. Its subject matter was controversial enough that half of the network’s affiliates declined to broadcast it. That combination of stage experience and challenging screen material gives Sullivan’s early career a distinctive shape. He arrived in movies and television after years spent building his craft in New York and London, rather than treating theatre as a brief stop along the way. Across all three mediums, his path reflects the working life of an actor prepared to move between Shakespeare, musical comedy, military drama and provocative contemporary writing. Sullivan died in 2008.