Canadian actor Donald Sutherland passes away at 88 after long illness

Donald Sutherland, the Canadian actor whose wry, arresting screen presence spanned more than half a century of films from M.A.S.H. to The Hunger Games, has died. He was 88.

Son Kiefer Sutherland confirmed the death Thursday. No details were immediately available.

I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film, Kiefer Sutherland said on X. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down but still eccentric roles in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK”. More, recently, he starred in the Hunger Games films. A memoir, Made Up, But Still True, is due out in November.

After graduating in 1956, Sutherland attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to study acting. He began appearing in West End plays and British television. After a move to Los Angeles, a series of war films changed his trajectory.

His breakthrough was “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played Vernon Pinkley, the officer-impersonating psychopath. 1970 saw the release of both the World War II yarn “Kelly’s Heroes” and “M.A.S.H.,” a smash hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

Sutherland identified personally with its anti-war message. Outspoken against the Vietnam War, he along with actress Jane Fonda and others founded the Free Theater Associates in 1971. Banned by the Army because of their political views, they performed in venues near military bases in Southeast Asia in 1973.

I thought I was going to be part of a revolution that was going to change movies and its influence on people, Sutherland told the Los Angeles Times.

His career as a leading man peaked in the 1970s, when he starred in films by the era’s top directors even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who frequently said he considered himself at the service of a director’s vision, worked with Federico Fellini (1976’s “Fellini’s Casanova”), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976’s “1900”), Claude Chabrol (1978’s “Blood Relatives”) and John Schlesinger (1975’s “The Day of the Locust”).

One of his finest performances came as a detective in Alan Pakula’s “Klute” (1971). It was during filming that he met Fonda, with whom he had a three-year relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actor Shirley Douglas. He and Douglas divorced in 1971 after having twins: Rachel and Kiefer, who was named after Warren Kiefer, the writer of Sutherland’s first film, Castle of the Living Dead.

Nicolas Roeg’s psychological horror film Don’t Look Now (1973) was another high point. Sutherland starred with Julie Christie as a grieving married couple who move to Venice after their daughter’s death. The film included a famous, explicit sex scene, artfully edited.

Nic and I thought that maybe I would die in the process of it, so much were we committed, Sutherland once said. His admiration for the film and Roeg was such that he and his next wife, actress Francine Racette, named their first-born child Roeg.

Sutherland married Racette in 1972 and remained with her the rest of his life. She survives him. They had two other children together: Rossif, named after the director Frederic Rossif; and Angus Redford, named after Redford.

Robert Redford’s Ordinary People” (1980) also dealt with the loss of a child. His directorial debut, starring Sutherland as the father of a family destroyed by tragedy, won four Oscars, including best picture.

First Published: Jun 21 2024 | 10:11 AM IST