DONALD SUTHERLAND
(17 July 1935 - 20 June 2024)
The first time I was aware of the Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who has died after a long illness, aged 88, was in Mike Sarne’s film Joanna in 1967 in which he played a foppish aristocrat called Lord Peter Sanderson. A Canadian trying to sound upper class English didn’t seem right and I thought he would probably not have a good career. I was, of course, wrong, and Sutherland went on to be in much better films and proved he was an actor of great ability, indeed one of the best. Joanna wasn’t his first film – his debut, uncredited, had been a scene in Wolf Rilla’s The World Ten Times Over, followed by three roles in Warren Kiefer’s Castle of the Living Dead, then Silvio Narizzano’s Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling!) with Tallulah Bankhead, and Freddie Francis’ Dr Terror’s House of Horrors. Moving on, Sutherland was cast in some more orthodox pictures, James B. Harris’ The Bedford Incident with Richard Widmark, Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar Brain with Michael Caine, David Greene’s The Shuttered Room and also his Sebastian with Dirk Bogarde. The most successful of Sutherland’s early appearances was in The Dirty Dozen, Robert Aldrich’s war drama with an all-star cast, including Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Robert Ryan and Telly Savalas. Made by MGM in the UK it had Sutherland playing Vernon L. Pinkley which undoubtedly helped him to further his career. After Joanna, a pale comedy-drama, Sutherland had much better parts in much better films.
He was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, to Dorothy and Frederick Sutherland, his father being a salesman for public utilities. Donald graduated from Bridgewater High in Nova Scotia and went on to Victoria University, part of the University of Toronto, where he studied engineering. Then he moved to London to study acting at Lamda and was cast in some West End productions. Repertory at Perth followed until he secured small roles in films and on television including The Saint and The Avengers. However, on his going to the US, Sutherland could do no wrong and he became a star virtually overnight.
He was Hawkeye in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and then did Kelly’s Heroes, a World War II comedy with Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Don Rickles, and with Gene Wilder he made Bud Yorkin’s historical farce Start the Revolution Without Me. Then Alan J. Pakula’s Klute provided him with a title role (as John Klute), a detective investigating a call girl played by Jane Fonda, who receives obscene letters from a vanished executive. Sutherland worked again with Fonda on a film they co-produced in 1972 called F.T.A. (Fuck the Army) and on Steelyard Blues. With Julie Christie he made Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, from a story by Daphne du Maurier, about a mourning couple who meet up with a psychic woman in Venice. He also had leading roles in John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust, Bertolucci’s 1900, Fellini’s Casanova, John Sturges’ The Eagle Has Landed, Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives and Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Ordinary People was the first film to be directed by Robert Redford. It shows the lives of a family that is slowly falling apart. With Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton it won Oscars for director Redford, producer Ronald L. Schwary, writer Alvin Sargent and actor Timothy Hutton. Sutherland’s acting range knew no bounds as he explored the worlds of Agatha Christie in Ordeal by Innocence, small time crooks in Louis Malle’s Crackers, the American Revolutionary War in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution with Al Pacino, the life of Paul Gauguin in The Wolf at the Door, mountain climbers in Werner Herzog’s Scream of Stone, the death of Kennedy in Oliver Stone’s JFK, firefighting in Ron Howard’s Backdraft, killing vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, con-artistry in Fred Schepisi’s Six Degrees of Separation, viral plague in Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak, and dystopian manipulation in the hugely popular Hunger Games franchise. His last film was Heart Land (2023), a thriller about a post-apocalyptic America, which has yet to be released.
From 1962 to 2023 Donald Sutherland also had a flourishing career on TV. Apart from The Saint and The Avengers, there were also Gideon’s Way, A Farewell to Arms, Man in a Suitcase, The Simpsons, Moby Dick, Treasure Island and Dirty Sexy Money. There were also the TV movies Hamlet at Elsinore, Citizen X and Bethune: The Making of a Hero, about the Canadian surgeon who went to China to set up hospitals and train medical staff. And in 2018 he appeared in the series Trust playing J. Paul Getty and, in fact, with his long face he looked remarkably like the celebrated wealthiest man in the world. In all, Sutherland made 200 films and TV shows and never stopped working in all kinds of good, bad and indifferent projects. To have Sutherland on your side meant he would bring to the work something extra over and above just star quality.
He was married three times, firstly to the schoolteacher Lois May Hardwick, then to Shirley Douglas, who gave him two children, the twins Kiefer and Rachel. After an affair with Jane Fonda, he married the French-Canadian actress Francine Racette and had three sons, Rossif, Angus Redford and Roeg who, with Kiefer, were all named after directors he had worked with. Although he was never Oscar-nominated, Sutherland received many other gongs – Primetime Emmys, Golden Globes and festival awards – In total some 33 nominations. However, in 2018 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his lifetime’s work – and not before time too.
MICHAEL DARVELL