Donald Sutherland

Canadian actor Donald Sutherland tragically died on 20 June 2024 in Miami at the age of 88 following a long illness. Sutherland was born on 17 July 1935 at the Saint John General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, As a child, he had rheumatic fever, hepatitis, and poliomyelitis. In a letter Sutherland sent to a Saint John Free Public Library representative in 2017, he detailed how he and his family had lived in a farmhouse in Lakeside, a rural community in Kings County near Hampton, before moving to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, at the age of 12,where he spent his teenage years. He obtained his first part-time job, at the age of 14, as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW. Sutherland graduated from Bridgewater High School. He then studied at Victoria University, an affiliated college of the University of Toronto, where he met his first wife Lois May Hardwick, and graduated with a double major in engineering and drama. He had at one point been a member of the “UC Follies” comedy troupe in Toronto. He changed his mind about becoming an engineer, and left Canada for Britain in 1957, studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

While at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Sutherland began appearing in West End productions. Sutherland acted at the Perth Repertory Theatre in Scotland in 1960. In the early-to-mid-1960s, Sutherland began to gain small roles in British films and TV (such as a hotel receptionist in The Sentimental Agent episode “A Very Desirable Plot”. He was featured alongside Christopher Lee in horror films such as Castle of the Living Dead and the anthology film Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors . He also had a supporting role in the Hammer Films production Die! Die! My Darling! with Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers. In the same year, he appeared in the Cold War classic The Bedford Incident and in the TV series Gideon’s Way, in the 1966 episode “The Millionaire’s Daughter”. In 1966, Sutherland appeared in the BBC TV play Lee Oswald – Assassin, playing a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Givens. He also appeared in the TV series The Saint, in the 1965 episode “The Happy Suicide” In 1967, he appeared in The Avengers. epsode “The Superlative Seven”, In 1966 he also made a second, appearance in The Saint in The episode, “Escape Route”, directed by Roger Moore, who later recalled Sutherland “asked me if he could show it to some producers as he was up for an important role… they came to view a rough cut and he got The Dirty Dozen.”The film, which starred Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and several other popular actors, was the fifth highest-grossing film of 1967 and MGM’s highest-grossing film of the year. In 1968, after the breakthrough in the UK-filmed The Dirty Dozen, Sutherland left London for Hollywood

Sutherland then appeared in two war films, playing the lead role as “Hawkeye” Pierce in Robert Altman’s MASH in 1970; and, again in 1970, as hippie tank commander “Oddball” in Kelly’s Heroes. His health was threatened by spinal meningitis contracted during the filming of the latter film. Sutherland starred with Gene Wilder in the 1970 comedy Start the Revolution Without Me and the thriller Klute. Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda co-produced and starred together in the anti–Vietnam War documentary F.T.A. consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviews with U.S. troops who were then on active service. As a follow-up to their appearance in Klute, Sutherland and Fonda performed together in Steelyard Blues a “freewheeling, Age-of-Aquarius, romp-and-roll caper” from the writer David S. Ward.

Throughout the 1970s Sutherland portrayed leading man roles in films such as the Venice-based psychological horror film Don’t Look Now (1973), co-starring Julie Christie, a role which saw him nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, the war film The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976), and the thriller Eye of the Needle and as the health inspector in the science fiction/horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) alongside Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum. He starred in the Canadian television series Witness to Yesterday, as the Montreal doctor Norman Bethune, a physician and humanitarian. Sutherland also had a role as pot-smoking Professor Dave Jennings in National Lampoon’s Animal House in 1978, Sutherland also starred in the heist comedy film The First Great Train Robbery, alongside Sean Connery, He was praised for his performance in the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1976 epic film 1900 and as the conflicted father in the Academy Award-winning family drama Ordinary People alongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. In 1981, he narrated A War Story, an Anne Wheeler film. He played the role of physician-hero Norman Bethune in Bethune and Bethune: The Making of a Hero). In 1983, he co-starred with Teri Garr and Tuesday Weld in an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent.

During the 1980s and 1990s Sutherland appeared in the apartheid drama A Dry White Season alongside Marlon Brando and Susan Sarandon; as a sadistic warden in Lock Up (1989) with Sylvester Stallone; as an incarcerated pyromaniac in the firefighter thriller Backdraft (1991) alongside Kurt Russell and Robert De Niro, as the humanitarian doctor-activist Norman Bethune in 1990’s Bethune: The Making of a Hero, and as a snobbish New York City art dealer in Six Degrees of Separation with Stockard Channing and Will Smith. In the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK, he played a mysterious Washington intelligence officer, reputed to have been L. Fletcher Prouty, who spoke of links to the military–industrial complex in the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. He played psychiatrist and visionary Wilhelm Reich in the video for Kate Bush’s 1985 single, “Cloudbusting”. In 1992, he played the role of Merrick in the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Kristy Swanson. In 1994, he played the head of a government agency hunting for aliens who take over people’s bodies (a premise similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) in the film of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1951 book The Puppet Masters. In 1994, Sutherland played a software company’s scheming CEO in Barry Levinson’s drama Disclosure opposite Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, in 1994 he played a KGB officer in the video game Conspiracy, and in 1995 was cast as Maj. Gen. Donald McClintock in Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak. He was later cast in 1996 (for only the second time) with his son Kiefer in Joel Schumacher’s A Time to Kill. Sutherland played the famous American Civil War General P.G.T. Beauregard in the 1999 film The Hunley. He played an astronaut in Space Cowboys (2000), with co-stars Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, and James Garner. Sutherland was a model for Chris Claremont and John Byrne to create Donald Pierce, the Marvel Comics character whose last name comes from Sutherland’s character in the 1970 film M*A*S*H, Hawkeye Pierce.

In 2003Sutherland portrayed Reverend Monroe in the Civil War drama Cold Mountain, he also appeared in the drama thriller Baltic Storm (2003), in the remake of The Italian Job (2003), in the TV series Commander in Chief (2005–2006), in the film Fierce People (2005) with Diane Lane and Anton Yelchin, and as Mr. Bennet in Pride & Prejudice (2005), starring alongside Keira Knightley. He also played a minor role in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me (2007). Sutherland starred as Tripp Darling in the prime time drama series Dirty Sexy Money for ABC. He played multi-millionaire Nigel Honeycut in the 2008 film Fool’s Gold. His distinctive voice was also used in many radio and television commercials, including those for Delta Air Lines, Volvo automobiles, and Simply Orange orange juice.

Sutherland also provided voice-overs and narration during the intro of the first semifinal of Eurovision Song Contest 2009, and the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and was also one of the Olympic flag bearers. In
2010, he starred alongside an ensemble cast in a TV adaptation of Ken Follett’s novel The Pillars of the Earth (2010). From 2012, Sutherland portrayed President Coriolanus Snow, the main antagonist of The Hunger Games film franchise, in The Hunger Games (2012), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014), and Part 2 (2015). In 2013 Sutherland appeared in the European police procedural Crossing Lines, as Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court named Michel Dorn. In 2017, Sutherland, received an Honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “for a lifetime of indelible characters, rendered with unwavering truthfulness”. In 2018, Sutherland portrayed an oil tycoon J. Paul Getty in the FX a historical drama series Trust. In 2020, he appeared in the HBO limited series The Undoing alongside Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman. Sutherland also plays the role of Mr. Harrigan in the 2022 Netflix film Mr. Harrigan’s Phone written and directed by John Lee Hancock, based on the novella of the same name from the book If It Bleeds by Stephen King.

During a career spanning six decades, Sutherland became one of Canada’s most respected and versatile actors and received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Honorary Award in 2017. A Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. In 2000 Sutherland was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2000 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) in 1978, a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012, and received the Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) in 2019.