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Joan Wilson Sullivan Brett
Jeremy talks about Joan Joan and Jeremy married on Nov. 22, 1976. Her death on July 4, 1985, eventually led to major turmoil in Jeremy's life. "We had a decade together," he said of his soul mate. "I loved her dearly, she was so beautiful and gutsy." They shared a birthday -- November 3 -- and a common bond. "We had a once-in-a-lifetime love," he has said. "She was an incredible person, the best wife a man could have. This was the kind of relationship where I would start a sentence and she would finish it. Sometimes you can see behind somebody's eyes and feel as if you have known them all your life. That's how it was." Joan had gone to see Design for Living in 1973 in London and saw Jeremy on stage. She declared, "That's the man for me!" Later, she interviewed him for Classic Theatre -- to introduce his performance in The Rivals when it aired on PBS. According to Joan, it was love at first take: "My audio man put together a video cassette and you could see the chemistry."
Jeremy regarded Caleb and Rebekah Sullivan as his children -- a legacy for him from Joan -- and kept in touch with them after her death, as well as Joan's mother. Joan and Jeremy thrived on work, and their absences from one another must have made their hearts grow fonder! During one span in 1980, Joan recounted, "I spent a week with Jeremy in January. In February, we got together when Mobil threw a party for Masterpiece Theatre. In April, I saw him in London. Mostly, he stays in Los Angeles and I'm here in Boston. We see each other in different places -- wherever we happen to be." Joan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1984, when Jeremy was working on the first Sherlock Holmes series.
To be near her and keep working, Jeremy took on two projects in New York City -- co-starring in Aren't We All? and serving as a narrator in Song. She died on July 4, 1985, and Jeremy continued in Aren't We All? through July 23. "I don’t know how I did those performances," he told NPR. "And I was contracted to start [Sherlock Holmes] again on September the 3rd of that year. And they said, 'Well, Jeremy, it may help if you get back on the bike.' ... And I did the next five films with the most appalling ill grace I’m afraid. I mean, I just didn’t want to do them. "And then I had ... an almighty breakdown. And when I came through that, thanks entirely to my darling son, David, who was a valiant friend to me through that ... I got back on the bike again! (chuckles) And I remember saying, 'If I can get to Manchester [where Sherlock Holmes was filmed], I’ll be all right.' And then I made The Sign of Four and I began ... to feel better with Holmes, and I wasn’t quite so ... cross with him, 'cause I blamed him a little. I was working, you see, so far away from Joan, and it had taken up so much of ... our last few years. And ... you know, time is the great healer. And now ... actually, Caleb, my eldest, my legacy from Joan, says that I’m looking much better than he’s seen me in years. "So, slowly, slowly, slowly. You never get over a loss like that. You get used to it but you never get over it." |
Here's
some background information about Joan from a Boston Globe
article, 
In
a 1991 interview on National Public Radio (NPR), Jeremy said, "I knew at
the end of The Final Problem in '84 that she had cancer, and the
lights really went out in my life. ... We were
going to do all the treatment in England and then we decided to
do it in Boston because she ... worked for WGBH."