Cover Story by Amp It Up! Staff
From ordinary to
Katy Sullivan likes to joke that she never got the memo. The memo she’s talking about is the one that says that a woman born without legs from above the knees down can’t do certain things - that she is relegated to living the type of life that “two-leggers” often expect of someone with no legs. “I have always believed that I could do anything that I want, and having my physical situation just makes me stand out that much more from the crowd,” she says. “Being told ‘no’ or that I ‘can’t’ do something has done nothing but inspire me to work harder in my life. The path that I have taken has been complicated at times, and I could have found one with less resistance,
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Amp it up! magazine MAY/JUNE/JULY 2012
but that wouldn’t be me.” Katy, who is now a successful actor, athlete, motivational speaker and spokesperson, considers “can’t” a four-letter word and says that when she hears it, she takes it as merely a suggestion - a suggestion that she usually rejects. Indeed, she has been achieving successes all over the place in the last 10 years. You might, for example, have seen her playing the feisty redhead on the television comedy “My Name Is Earl.” And if not there, you might have caught a glimpse of her on “I’m with Stupid,” “Dirt,” “Nip/Tuck,“ Pretty People“ or “Some Assembly Required.” Or perhaps, if you were even more fortunate, you might have seen her in the play “The Long Red Road,” directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.