Didi Sullivan

[Geoffers]

I was watching an episode of The Likely Lads in which this actress had a small part as a potential girlfriend of one of the lads. Her friend was played by Anneke Wills, and, as I know how her career developed, I decided to see what happened to Didi.

However, looking her up on IMDb and other sites (including Wikipedia) it seems she is being confused with an Italian actress named Didi Perego, who may have also used Didi Sullivan as an alternate name.

Here's the IMDb page: Didi Perego - IMDb - I find it hard to believe a quite well-known Italian actress would have popped over to London to play small parts in such series as The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, The Troubleshooters etc..

Here's a screen-grab of her in an episode of Man in a Suitcase. I must say she seems British through and through, anybody have an photos of Didi Perego, in case I've got it all wrong?

[wearysloth]

Didi Perego for comparison


I've seen your girl very recently in something...that will annoy me all day now, lol
I shall watch this thread with interest

[Geoffers]

Thanks, Weary, it's clearly a different actress. I shall attempt to split them on IMDb and correct the Wikipedia bio.

Sorry about your recent sighting! She does look familiar but maybe she looks similar to somebody better known. Or, of course, she could have been in many other films and TV series without a credit. According to IMDb she was only in 8 TV programmes.

[wearysloth]

Enter Miss Sullivan
DIDI SULLIVAN, last seen in "The
Avengers" as a Lancashire pottery designer
with an ambition to become Miss World, plays a
frustrated neurotic in ITV's play "Exits and
Entrances," tonight (9.15). Jemma Hyde has the
role of a bored wife whose psychologist husband
(Douglas Wilmer) spends the day with Didi. . .

ITV London
9.15 - TELEVISION PLAYHOUSE:
Exits and Entrances—drama,
starring Douglas Wilmer as a
rich psychologist, with Jemma
Hyde and Didi Sullivan.

~Daily Mirror March 8th, 1963

[Geoffers]

Great work! Curiously that episode is one of the few missing on both IMDb and the BFI site - I will add it to IMDb.
I'm now wondering what *did* become of Didi Sullivan. Maybe she married, had children and decided to leave the business. Or maybe she just retired from acting early - it happens.

[wellendcanons]

I was watching an episode of The Likely Lads in which this actress had a small part as a potential girlfriend of one of the lads. Her friend was played by Anneke Wills, and, as I know how her career developed, I decided to see what happened to Didi.

However, looking her up on IMDb and other sites (including Wikipedia) it seems she is being confused with an Italian actress named Didi Perego, who may have also used Didi Sullivan as an alternate name.

Here's the IMDb page: Didi Perego - IMDb - I find it hard to believe a quite well-known Italian actress would have popped over to London to play small parts in such series as The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, The Troubleshooters etc..

Here's a screen-grab of her in an episode of Man in a Suitcase. I must say she seems British through and through, anybody have an photos of Didi Perego, in case I've got it all wrong?

Thanks for pointing this out Geoffers. I certainly believed it was the same actress. So Didi Sullivan may well be still alive after all! I've only ever seen her in The Avengers episode Immortal Clay and she was lovely in that. I would love to see her episode of The Likely Lads, especially with Anneke Wills also being a guest star!

wec

[Geoffers]

Thanks for pointing this out Geoffers. I certainly believed it was the same actress. So Didi Sullivan may well be still alive after all! I've only ever seen her in The Avengers episode Immortal Clay and she was lovely in that. I would love to see her episode of The Likely Lads, especially with Anneke Wills also being a guest star!

wec

Not the greatest quality, but here's a couple of screen-grabs from The Likely Lads.

[wellendcanons]

Thanks for the screencaps Geoffers. Very much appreciated.

wec

[cornershop15]

I hope you haven't made your corrections just yet, Geoffers. This might be the same actress.

Didi Perego (as Didi Sullivan) in 'Man of the World'

I was dissatisfied with the stills of Didi in the image gallery for the episode, Specialist for the Kill, and so decided to look for her scenes. Of course, I ended up capturing everyone else, including ITC legends Paul Maxwell and Derren Nesbitt, dwarf actor Kenny Baker and none other than Gordon Tanner, star of future thread 'Getting to Know You', so it's been a rewarding if exhausting day.

In the words of Michael Strait (Craig Stevens), Didi's character Nina was "one minute
nursemaid, the next minute trapeze artist"! She was leading a double life in this too:


This is when photographer Michael realises they are one and the same. He'd earlier captured her
screaming at the assassination of 'President' George Pravda and draws a little hat to make sure!

Closer views of the sadly-late actress, who I think bears a resemblance to Lynn Redgrave here:


In this scene, the witness meets 'Colonel' Paul Maxwell and a suspicious Craig Stevens:

She looks even more like Lynn here!

Original ITV Transmission: 8th December 1962 when Frank Ifield was #1 with Lovesick Blues

Always sad when an actress you've just discovered died years ago, and relatively young as well.

R.I.P.

[Geoffers]

[CENTER]I hope you haven't made your corrections just yet, Geoffers. This might be the same actress.

I have done, though if I'm wrong it shouldn't be too much of a problem reverting back again. However, I'm still not convinced. Here is Didi Sullivan in Man in a Suitcase in 1968. Here is Didi Perego in the film The Appointment in 1969. It just doesn't look like the same person to me. Also, Perego is described in one short bio as "statuesque". She certainly looks it in The Appointment when standing next to the star, Anouk Aimee. In The Likely Lads, Didi Sullivan is quite short, in fact, shorter than Anneke Wills and James Bolam - neither of whom are giants! So, I don't know what to make of it. Maybe Perego did appear in *some* of those early British TV series but I go back to my original question about why Perego would make these cameo appearances in British TV when apparently having a successful film career in her home country? Her appearance in Man in a Suitcase lasted about two minutes!

[cornershop15]

Good morning, Geoffers.

I've just 'done the rounds' at the usual photo sites and, after typing the name Didi Perego, found this publicity still:

This was for a film called Caltiki - il mostro immortale (1959) (USA title: Caltiki - The Immortal Monster, aka Caltiki - The Undying Monster), and is clearly the same actress who is in Man of the World: Specialist for the Kill.

Google Image searches for Didi Perego show two very different-looking actresses, and the Didi Sullivan in Man in a Suitcase: The Whisper, which I watched myself two weeks ago, doesn't resemble either of them. Yet the young woman in The Likely Lads captures does match the Man of the World actress. Curioser and curioser.

Caltiki - The Immortal Monster is on YouTube, in seven parts:


We might find some information in amongst the YouTube comments. Could she have had plastic surgery that went wrong?

[Geoffers]

I can't disagree with anything you've said, Cornershop! It's a very odd situation and clearly I need to dig a little deeper. Of course she is/was an actress and they are adept at disguising themselves from time to time, but this does seem a little extreme. I've also heard her speaking with 3 different accents to date and haven't heard her in Man of the World or The Avengers yet, so if it is all the same person, she's very talented.

[cornershop15]

The Mystery Continues ...

I see you've been successful in creating a separate IMDb profile for Didi Sullivan, Geoffers, but Caltiki is still in the Perego filmography, even though that's the same actress who was in Man of the World!

This is a translation of Didi Perego's entry at the Italian My Movies. Oddly, she is referred to as he throughout in both this biography and her Italian Wikipedia page, but I think it's the same with other actors and actresses:

After studying at the Academy of Filodrammatici of Milan, made her debut in 1954 with Ugo Tognazzi (Mon Babies, The Doctor of Women), assuming his Pygmalion Giorgio Albertazzi (The Lesson) [and Last Year in Marienbad, don't forget ].

[Then followed? ...] Following faced important rehearsal, especially under the direction of Giorgio Strehler, who directed her in between the other two memorable editions of the plays of Carlo Goldoni: The Campiello (1974) and Barney Chiozzotte (1993).

Intense character actress with great versatility, able to interpret roles at the same time grotesque and sad, all united by her "unmistakable deep voice" (Francesco Rosi). In the cinema worked with Gillo Pontecorvo (with Kapo, 1961, he won the Nastro d'Argento) , Luigi Comencini, Sidney Lumet, Ettore Scola and Carlo Lizzani.

On television, starred in numerous dramas, in which [she] often played minor roles, but characterized with extreme efficiency: to remember the character of Arabella Briggs in Vanity Fair (1967), by Anton Giulio Majano, and Esther in Orpheus in Paradise (1971), Leandro Castellani. In 1992 she was among the leaders of Ivy, our local soap opera inspired by the feuilleton.

Awards and Nominations
Silver Ribbon 1961

Best Supporting Actress for the film Kapo by Gillo Pontecorvo.

This picture shows she's the same woman as the one above:

In La signora gioca bene a scopa? (Poker in Bed) (1974)

The double entendre-sounding title was probably the work of an Englishman!

Clearly a different actress to the one who played Alex in Man in a Suitcase:

How come she had close-ups, despite appearing for only a few seconds, and Sheila Brennan didn't?

[wearysloth]

Here's a lady I have credited as
Caron Gardner in an episode of The Saint: The Power Artists

although I have to admit that shot doesn't look like other shots of Caron

any thoughts?