Background

Ethnicity: Sutherland has Scottish, German, and English roots.

Donald Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. He is a son of Frederick McLea Sutherland, salesman and utility company executive, and Dorothy Isobel Sutherland (maiden name McNichol), a math teacher.

Education

Donald Sutherland was a sickly boy. He suffered from rheumatic fever, hepatitis, and poliomyelitis in his childhood.

As a teenager, Sutherland lived in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia where he attended local schools, including Bridgewater Junior High School (initially known as Bridgewater Junior Senior High School). He collected a variety of jobs during his youth, including DJ's post on the local CKBW radio station.

He then entered Victoria University college of the University of Toronto and received a joint Bachelor of Arts degree in engineering and drama in 1956.

Sutherland eventually changed his intention to become an engineer, probably under the influence of the time he spent in Toronto's "UC Follies" comedy troupe, and instead turned his attention to acting.

Following his intention, Sutherland came to the United Kingdom in 1957 and graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art a year later.

In 2005, Sutherland was presented the Honorary Doctor of Arts by Middlebury College.

Career

Donald Sutherland began his career as an actor at the Perth Repertory Theatre in Scotland where he came after graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He then returned to London and continued to perform on the stage for a while with local repertory companies. Sutherland also had bit roles in a variety of TV series, like The Saint, Court Martial, and The Avengers.

In 1964, Sutherland debuted in movie starring alongside Christopher Lee in Castle of the Living Dead and in 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, both horrors. Three years after the debut, he joined the cast of Robert Aldrich's war movie The Dirty Dozen consisting of Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown and Telly Savalas as Vernon Pinkley. The success of the movie provided Sutherland with the main role of Hawkeye Pierce in another war picture, MASH, satirical this time. This breakthrough role was followed by the parts in Kelly's Heroes, Klute, and Don't Look Now.

At the turn of the 1970s, Sutherland established McNichol Picture production company. Other commercial and critical successes of few subsequent decades included Bertolucci's 1900, Robert Redford's Ordinary People, A Dry White Season with Marlon Brando as a co-star, and JFK. Although the actor mostly appeared in classic roles, he was also involved in several uncommon projects, like the title role in Fellini's Casanova or a professor in Landis comedy National Lampoon's Animal House. In 1981, Sutherland debuted on the New York stage in Lolita.

The actor continued to diversify the collection of his roles throughout the 1990s and on. He tried himself in a number of science fiction pictures, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Genie Award-winner Threshold, and the adventure thriller Space Cowboys. In the 2010s, Sutherland incarnated the leader of a dystopian society in The Hunger Games franchise. At the same time, the actor didn't neglect fatherlike and big-hearted parts as it was in the case of Cold Mountain, The Italian Job, Pride & Prejudice, The Mechanic, and The Eagle.

A star of the big screen, Donald Sutherland came back to the small one from time to time. He has starred in such TV productions, as Uprising, Frankenstein, Dirty Sexy Money, and Trust to name but a few. Citizen X is one of his most important projects in the realm.

In 2009, Sutherland was a narrator and voice-over of the intro of the 1st semifinal of Eurovision Song Contest. A year later, he did the same at the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver also being among the Olympic flag bearers.

The recent projects of Donald Sutherland include a supporting role in Ad Astra, alongside Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, and The Burnt Orange Heresy, both of 2019.

Achievements

• 

  Donald Sutherland is cited as one of the most respected actors. He has appeared in about 200 different movies and TV productions during the fifty decades of his career.
  
  Sutherland received the Honorary Award from the Academy in 2017 for his cinematographic contributions. The actor has many other distinctions to his credit, both from his native Canada and the United States, including Genie Award, Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, Satellite Award, and Governor Genera's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
  
  Sutherland was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978, and raised to Companion in 2019. He is a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters as well. He is inducted in Hollywood and Canada's Walk of Fame.

Works

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  • Free Money

    (When Bud stumbles upon the financial opportunity of a lif...)

    1998
  • 1900

    (Set in the countryside of the Province of Emilia in Italy...)

    1976
  • Eye of the Needle

    (Donald Sutherland stars as a villainous Nazi spy whose pa...)

    1981
  • Kelly's Heroes

    (They were goldbricks until they found out about the gold ...)

    1970
  • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

    (Jennifer Lawrence stars as Katniss Everdeen, who began he...)

    2015
  • Outbreak

    (Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman star in this present da...)

    1995
  • Without Limits

    (The fiery life and fast times of the renowned distance ru...)

    1998
  • Nothing Personal

    (Suzanne Somers, an environmentally concerned lawyer, was ...)

    1980
  • JFK

    (An Academy Award-winning docudrama chronicling New Orlean...)

    1991
  • MASH

    (A pair of surgeons at a mobile army surgical hospital cre...)

    1970
  • Don't Look Now

    (On a trip to Venice, a young couple whose daughter has ju...)

    1973
  • Path to War

    (John Frankenheimer's powerful look at how President Lyndo...)

    2002
  • Citizen X

    (A Russian police detective faces almost insurmountable od...)

    1995
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers

    (In San Francisco, a group of people discover the human ra...)

    1978
  • Klute

    (A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctan...)

    1971
  • The Dirty Dozen

    (Oscar-winner Lee Marvin leads a group of 12 hardened conv...)

    1967
  • Cold Mountain

    (A Civil War deserter undertakes an arduous journey to ret...)

    2003
  • The Eagle Has Landed

    (A Nazi Strike Force plots to kidnap Winston Churchill whi...)

    1976
  • A Time to Kill

    (A murder trial brings a small Mississippi town's racial t...)

    1996
  • Ordinary People

    (An intense examination of a family being torn apart by te...)

    1980
  • Pride & Prejudice

    (A man begins a convoluted courtship with a young woman.)

    2005
  • The Italian Job

    (The plan was flawless. The execution was perfect. Charlie...)

    2003
  • A Dry White Season

    (South Africa, 1976. The police ruled Gordon Ngubene's dea...)

    1989

Politics

Donald Sutherland supported Barack Obama through the blogs that he kept for The Huffington Post website during the 2008 presidential campaign.

According to some documents unclassified in 2017, Sutherland was under surveillance of the National Security Agency from 1971 to 1973 by reason of his anti-war activities.

Views

Quotations: "One measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions."

"When I was 17, my dad asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I thought I would like to be an actor. I didn't have any idea what it was to be an actor. None. I'd wanted to be either an actor or a sculptor, which are both essentially the same thing. That's how it all started for me."

"I don't think I have one iota of cynicism about acting."

"I have been able to play a lot of guys and they have kept me working."

"I don't think I'm an actor who takes their characters home with him. But I certainly do take the preparation home."

"I haven't been very good about dealing with disappointment. I suffer it, and then when that suffering becomes a kind of predation, then it's gone. Because the disappointment is not always realistic."

"It's the things we love most that destroy us."

"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"

Membership

Donald Sutherland was among the members of the Official Competition jury at the 69th Cannes International Film Festival in 2016.

Personality

Physical Characteristics: One of Southerland's childish illnesses, poliomyelitis, negatively affected his legs by shortening one of them.

Connections

Donald Sutherland was married to Lois Hardwick (avoid confusion with the child actress of the 1920s) from 1959 to 1966. He then formed a family with a daughter of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, an actress and activist Shirley Douglas. The family produced two children, twins Kiefer and Rachel. Both of them are associated with cinematography. Kiefer Sutherland is a famous actor and Rachel is a TV producer.

Sutherland met his third wife, an actress Francine Racette, during the shooting of the Canadian movie Alien Thunder. They married in 1972. Racette gave birth to three sons, Rossif, Angus Redford, both actors, and Roeg Sutherland, a company executive.

Sutherland named all sons in honor of the directors whom he has collaborated with.

From 1970 to 1972, Sutherland had a love affair with an actress Jane Fonda which started on the set of the movie Klute.

Father:

Frederick McLea Sutherland

Mother:

Dorothy Isobel Sutherland

Wife:

Francine Racette

Son:

Roeg Sutherland

Roeg Sutherland presides over the Film Finance and Sales Group at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

Son:

Angus Sutherland

ex-wife:

Lois Hardwick

ex-wife:

Shirley Douglas

Son:

Kiefer Sutherland

Daughter:

Rachel Sutherland

Son:

Rossif Sutherland

Partner:

Jane Fonda

colleague:

Al Pacino

colleague:

Marlon Brando

colleague:

Susan Sarandon

colleague:

Robert De Niro

colleague:

Michael Douglas

colleague:

Demi Moore

colleague:

Clint Eastwood

colleague:

Keira Knightley

colleague:

Brad Pitt

References

• Discovering Donald Sutherland The episode of the Classic Movie Docs library, Discovering, that focuses on Donald Sutherland.
  2019