Katy Sullivan stars in a production of “Richard III” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (Credit: Liz Lauren)

In a fierce and unforgettable performance, actor and Paralympic athlete Katy Sullivan portrays the ruthless Richard III at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

“I have a fight inside of me that has really carried me through as a professional,” Sullivan told WTTW News.

Sullivan earned a Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Cost of Living” (2018).

She worked with the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Goodman Theatre.

And she competed in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, running 100 meters in 17.33 seconds and finishing sixth in the world for Team USA.

Katy Sullivan was also born a bilateral above-the-knee amputee, without both lower legs. She is the first actress who is an amputee to star on Broadway.

WTTW News spoke with the Alabama native about portraying the scheming villain who stands out as “deformed, unfinish’d.”

WTTW News: You seem highly motivated. Are you as ambitious as Richard III?

Katy Sullivan: I don’t share his ruthlessness, but I am an ambitious person. You don’t want to play a board game with me – I get pretty competitive. I’m an athlete and an actor, and being an actor is very collaborative once you get the job. Until you get the job, it’s competitive. You have to have an edge to yourself. I understand ambition, and that really was my first finger-hold into the character of Richard before really diving into him and getting to know him better.

It’s such a physically demanding role. Do you think there is common ground shared by theater and sports?

Being an athlete and an actor are so closely related. They are so similar in my mind, even to the extent that there are sets and costumes and lights and sound. You’re expected to show up and perform. This show is the closest marriage of those two things that I’ve ever had the opportunity to do, bringing who I am as an athlete into a role.

Scott Aiello, center, acts with his real life wife Katy Sullivan in a production of “Richard III” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (Credit: Liz Lauren)

Speaking of marriage, your husband, Scott Aiello, is in the show.

He auditioned! [laughs] It was not nepotism!

And you have him executed every night…

We’ve been saying that it’s couples therapy. I get to have him murdered eight times a week. It’s been so fun to work together and talk about how rehearsal went and to be onstage with him – we’ve never done this before.

The idea for casting you as “Richard III” came from Edward Hall, the new artistic director at Chicago Shakespeare. How did it come about?

We worked together in 2019 when I was in London doing “Cost of Living,” and he called [former artistic director] Barbara Gaines and said “I want to do Richard III and I want Katy Sullivan to play him.” I had no idea that he had done any of that, so this was on his agenda long before being named the artistic director at the theater, before he was handed that crown, if you will.

Katy Sullivan, pictured during a rehearsal, stars in a production of “Richard III” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (Credit: Liz Lauren)

You come across as fearless on the stage. What were you like as a child?

Precocious. I’m such an extrovert. I love being around people and I love trying to understand what people’s motivations are and why they do what they do – that’s one of the reasons I became an actor. I also love being the center of attention, so that was something that was present probably the day I was born.

But you know I was a kid who had a disability. I was born a congenital amputee, and so I’ve always pushed the limits of other people’s perception of what is possible for someone that lives their life from this place. I’ve always just had this sense of “Why not me?” I wish I could bottle it and sell it, because I’d be a billionaire.

Were your parents encouraging?

I’m the daughter of a doctor and a microbiologist. I have three siblings, and our parents never discouraged anything we wanted to do or try. They just wanted us to stay grounded. I learned early on that anything was possible, but perhaps I may have to work harder than an able-bodied kid or actor. I had a sense that it was going to be easy for them to say “no” to me, because I have these deficiencies that they can point to and say “she can’t do this.” I knew I had to be ten times better than the other actors that walked into the audition room, and I think that helped me develop a work ethic.

Lastly, you worked with the late, great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in Chicago in 2010 when he directed you in “The Long Red Road” at Goodman Theatre. What was that experience like?

I learned so much from him in a short period of time. He became what I’d consider a mentor. I sort of joke and say that I got my master’s degree in acting from working with him, because it’s so rare to work with someone who just loved the craft of acting with his whole soul. He was the person that taught me theater is a living, breathing organism, and the work is never done.

The day you close a show you should have figured out something new or seen a scene in a slightly different way or heard something from a cast member in a different way that you’ve never heard before. And if you aren’t listening for those subtleties, you’re not doing it right. I’ll be forever grateful for the time that I got to spend with him. He was extraordinary and, God, what a loss. (Note: Hoffman died in 2014 at age 46.)

“Richard III” is now playing through March 3 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.