Veteran actor known for roles in M*A*S*H, Klute and The Hunger Games, dead aged 88
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“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland’s son, wrote in an Instagram post Thursday.
“I personally think this is one of the most important actors in the history of cinema. He was never afraid of a role, good, bad or ugly.
“He loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”
Tall and known for his on-screen intensity, Sutherland won an Emmy for his role as a Soviet official in HBO’s fact-based film Citizen Xas well as two Golden Globes.
His career spans more than 50 years and 140 film titles, including recent roles in the limited series Trust such as oil magnate J. Paul Getty and HBO The cancellation.
Sutherland’s big break came when he was selected as one of the The dirty one Dozen in the star-studded 1967 blockbuster.
He followed this up with another war film, Kelly’s charactersbefore playing wisecracking Doctor Hawkeye Pierce in the film version of M*A*S*Z and opposite Jane Fonda in her Oscar-winning portrayal of an upscale “call girl” in the crime mystery Clute.
Fonda and Sutherland also had an off-screen relationship at the time they made the film.
Reflecting his ability to play any role, Sutherland’s 1970 resume included a chillingly effective remake of the horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a memorable turn as a pipe-smoking professor in the comedy National Lampoon House for animals.
He also starred with Julie Christie in director Nicolas Roeg’s film Don’t look nowa 1973 film that became somewhat infamous for its unusual sex scene that had to be cut down to avoid an X rating.
A steady stream of roles in a wide variety of genres followed, from a small but pivotal role in Oliver Stone JFK to support work in The common people – which won the Oscar for Best Picture – Buffy the Vampire killer, Reverse thrust and The Italian job.
Sutherland also stars as director Federico Fellini’s legendary lover Fellini’s Casanova. Meanwhile, many younger moviegoers will probably remember him as the evil president in the The Hunger Games movies.
Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Sutherland suffered several bouts of ill health as a child, including polio. He attended the University of Toronto where he studied engineering before turning to drama and acting, graduating with degrees in both.
The 193cm actor met his first wife, Lois Hardwick, at college and they married in 1959. He moved to London, where he found some work on the stage, and finally to Hollywood in the 1960s, where Dirty dozen and M*A*S*Z put it on the map.
In the mid-1960s, he divorced and married actress Shirley Douglas, whom he met while filming the horror film Castle of the Living Dead.
They have two children, actor Kiefer and Rachel, who also works on the film as a post-production supervisor. This marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1972 Sutherland married his third wife, actress Francine Racette, with whom he had three sons.
In a conversation in 2020, with The cancellation actor Hugh Grant for Interview magazine, Sutherland said he was always so nervous when shooting a movie that he threw up the night before. He also discussed subtly changing his dialogue, as he put it, to “try to make the lines that were given to me fit my mouth.”
Sutherland appeared in three films with her son Kiefer, beginning with 24 the star’s small role in the comedy drama Max Duggan is back in 1983, followed by John Grisham’s adaptation Time to kill. However, the two did not appear in a scene together until the 2016 Western Abandoned.
“It was a memory and an experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life,” Kiefer Sutherland said Good morning America at the time, saying he spent years searching for something the two could do together.
In 2019, Reuters asked Sutherland what advice he would give to young actors.
“Try to be as pious as possible, read, read a lot, study, memorize things, enjoy your artistry, learn to dance, be a circus performer, learn to juggle, so many things, but most of all you must observe, he replied.
Sutherland received an Honorary Award from the Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017 and was awarded the Order of Canada.
In 2022, Sutherland appeared alongside Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson in the space thriller Moonfall and the Roku TV miniseries Swimming with Sharks. His last credit came in 2023 when the actor starred in the Paramount+ western drama Lawmen: Bass Reeves.
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