Death of Donald Sutherland: Chameleon-like actor and anti-war activist who combined charm with menace

Get our free weekly email with the latest cinema news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our free The Life Cinematic email

BWhen Kiefer Sutherland announced the death of his father Donald Sutherland at the age of 88, he called him “one of the most important actors in film history.” Although this claim may sound exaggerated, it is borne out by the history of film. The elder Sutherland’s film career began in the early 1960s and spanned seven decades and more than 150 films to date. He made his last appearance last year in the western series Law Enforcer: Bass ReevesHis resume includes classics of various genres, including the 1970 anti-war satire MASHthe thriller from 1973 Don’t look nowand his recent appearances in The hunger GamesStanding at 6’4″, he was a towering presence on screen and cast a long shadow.

Donald McNichol Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, in the Canadian east coast town of Saint John, New Brunswick. His parents were Dorothy and Frederick, who ran the local gas, electricity and bus company. His first word, he once said, esquirewas “neck.” “My mother turned around and said, ‘What did he say?'” Sutherland recalled. “My sister said, ‘He said ‘neck.’ My neck was killing me. That was a sign of polio. One leg is a little shorter, but I survived.”

He was eager to get into the entertainment business and got his first job as a DJ at local radio station CKBW at age 14. In 1952, Sutherland attended the University of Toronto, where he became a valued member of the UC Follies comedy troupe. He graduated in 1956 with a double major in engineering and theater, but it was clear which half of his studies he was most passionate about when he moved to the United Kingdom to pursue his acting studies at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He married his first wife, Lois May Hardwick, in 1959 and the marriage lasted seven years.

Sutherland began his career in theatre and had a handful of small roles on British television before landing his first film role, playing both a young soldier and an old witch in the 1964 Italian horror film. The Castle of the Living DeadSutherland was so grateful for the breakthrough that in 1966 he named his first son after the producer Warren Kiefer, who had hired him.

In 1967, Sutherland became known in Hollywood through the release of Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozenin which Sutherland played a killer alongside Lee Marvin and John Cassavetes. Sutherland told The guard In 2005, he said he originally had only one line in the film until Clint Walker refused to do a scene in which he was supposed to imitate a general. According to Sutherland, Aldrich, who did not know his name, turned to him and said, “You! With the big ears! You do it!”

Three years later, his fame rose even further when he appeared in the Gene Wilder comedy Start the revolution without meand then in two more war films: as the aptly named Sergeant Oddball in Kelly’s Heroesand as subversive surgeon “Hawkeye” Pierce in Robert Altman’s highly successful counter-culture farce MASH.

Sutherland used his growing fame to become a prominent anti-war activist, making him a target of the U.S. establishment. In 2022, Kiefer Sutherland said The Independent: “Because of my father’s politics, they thought he was a social democrat, a socialist who believed in nationalized health care and a strong government, and those were not necessarily ‘American values.'”

Sutherland’s second wife, Shirley Douglas, was also a well-known activist. The daughter of Tommy Douglas, a socialist politician who founded the Canadian welfare state, she was both an actress and civil rights activist, and co-founder of the fundraising group Friends of the Black Panthers. Documents declassified in 2017 showed that Donald Sutherland was placed on an NSA watch list at the request of the CIA in the early 1970s.

However, this unwanted attention did not stop him from voicing his opinion. In 1971, Sutherland played the lead role in Alan Pakula’s thriller Klute alongside Jane Fonda, another anti-war protester with whom he had a two-year affair when his marriage to Douglas fell apart. In 1972, he co-wrote and co-produced an explosive anti-Vietnam War documentary entitled FTAwork with Fonda again.

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/month after free trial. Plan automatically renews until cancelled.

Try it for free

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/month after free trial. Plan automatically renews until cancelled.

Try it for free

In the 1970s, Sutherland starred in a number of films, each breaking with convention in its own way. He starred alongside Julie Christie in Nicolas Roeg’s chilling horror thriller Don’t look now in 1973, a film known both for an explicit, emotionally convoluted sex scene between Sutherland and Christie and for its dark narrative.

In 2002, Roeg said The Independent that the scene had been inspired by a friend who had lost a child. “They were told to try for another,” Roeg recalled. “That happens a lot. And we (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) talked about it. I think that’s why people have made so much of what is usually called a ‘love scene’ in movies. Most love scenes are seduction scenes… But these two are in love. They have children and are happily married. And then this terrible thing happens to them, and it’s more than they can bear.”

Sutherland later worked with the great Italian directors Bernardo Bertolucci (in the role of a fascist in 1900 1976) and Federico Fellini (as a fictitious Lothario in Casanovaalso in 1976), but also found time to play a pot-smoking college professor in John Landis’ college comedy animal shelter in 1978. That same year he played the lead role in Philip Kaufman’s sci-fi horror The body snatchers are coming.

In 1980, Sutherland received great acclaim for his portrayal of the suffering patriarch in Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning Ordinary peoplealongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. In the 1990s he played a central role in Oliver Stone’s provocative JFK Airport (1991) and played a Van Helsing-like hunter in the original film adaptation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). In 1995, he won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his work in the television film Citizen X.

Starting in 2012, Sutherland became known to a new generation of fans as President Snow, the main antagonist of the Hunger Games franchise. He appeared in four films in the series and again received widespread acclaim. Whether playing a villain, a hero, or some odd combination of the two, Sutherland managed to combine charm and menace in a way that few actors can.

In 2015, at the age of 80, he told the BBC at the promotion The Hunger Games – Mockingjay Part 2 that he was determined to continue working until the end. “It’s a passionate endeavor,” Sutherland said. “For actors, retirement means ‘DEATH.'”