Kevin Rodney Sullivan

Kevin Rodney Sullivan (born August 3, 1958) is an American film and television actor and film director.

Early life and acting career Sullivan is a San Francisco native who began his career as a child actor. The youngest of three children, he grew up in St. Francis Square in the Fillmore district. His father was a bus driver, and his mother was a receptionist for St. Mary's Hospital. According to Sullivan, he was "one step up from a housing project".

During sixth grade while performing in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sullivan's talents were noted by Ann Brebner, who hired him and his entire class as extras in a 1970 Sidney Poitier film, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!. This was his first experience with cinema. Brebner would continue to give Sullivan various auditions. In 1970, he was cast in an Alpha-Bits Cereal commercial, earning over $7,000. He continued to obtain small roles in theater productions and doing commercials. Most notably, he got a role as the Master of Ceremonies during an episode of Sesame Street being filmed live at Golden Gate Park. He had to "sit on this big garbage can with a microphone and introduce the various skits," with Jim Henson controlling the puppets. "The school had 1,200 boys; only 40 were black," according to Sullivan. However, while ABC bought the pilot, the show was never picked up. Fox considered purchasing the show but did not follow through.

Despite that minor setback, this background allowed Sullivan to jump into directing movies for HBO: the short film "Long Black Song", which was one of three in the America's Dream (1996) anthology movie, and Soul of the Game (1996). The later was a docudrama on how African Americans "broke the baseball color barrier" which follows the "triumphant and tragic stories" of Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Josh Gibson as they make their way out of the Negro leagues, and into the Majors. "For African-Americans in this century," Sullivan told The New York Times regarding Soul of the Game, "one man's victory is often the result of others paving the way, sometimes making the triumph both bitter and sweet". In addition to these series, Sullivan also produced Frank's Place (1987), I'll Fly Away (1991), Boy Meets Girl (1993), and Cosmic Slop (1994), before his first major production.

Major film productions The movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) swept the NAACP Image Awards, won the award for Outstanding Picture The film, while not the first to use a tropic paradise as its background, "may be the first to blatantly portray a tropical paradise as a sexual mecca beckoning tired American businesswomen to shed their clothes and inhibitions," according to a The New York Times review. Despite some mixed reviews, Sullivan still "provides a movie that speaks in a recognizable way to a black audience, particularly black women who have found themselves omitted from serious screen depiction over the decades". The movie focuses on a young white man (played by Kutcher) attempting to marry an African American woman, while trying to seek the approval of her overprotective father (played by Bernie Mac). Working with Sullivan did have its impact upon the film, as Kutcher explains, "Well, working for Kevin Sullivan was a very different experience for me. Kevin didn't just let us go. At no point in time did Kevin just let us go... And I think that that brought a different performance for each of us from what we'd done before". 30 Rock (2008) Lincoln Heights (2009) Eastwick (2010) Modern Family (2010) NCIS (2011) Anger Management (2013) Grey's Anatomy (2016–18) How to Get Away with Murder (2016) Notorious (2016) Being Mary Jane (2017) Dynasty (2017) Quantico (2018) Riverdale (2017–23) The Good Fight (2018–19) Titans (2018–19) You (2019) Evil (2019-20) Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2019–20) This Is Us (2021) Love, Victor (2021) Atypical (2021) Lost in Space (2021) Snowfall (2022) Surface (2022) Justified: City Primeval (2023) Elsbeth (2024) Unprisoned (2024) Brilliant Minds (2026)

Feature film Moe's World (1990) Boy Meets Girl (1993) Cosmic Slop (1994) America's Dream (1996) Soul of the Game (1996) How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) Conviction (2002) Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004; also executive soundtrack producer) Guess Who (2005) Rise (TBD, film)