Donald Sutherland dies aged 88

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88 years old.

Kiefer Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death on Thursday. No additional details were immediately available.

“Personally, I consider him one of the most important actors in the history of cinema,” said Kiefer Sutherland in X. “He was never intimidated by a role, whether good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that.”

The tall, thin Canadian actor with a smile that could be sweet or devilish was known for eccentric characters like Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s “MASH,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the stoned professor in ” Animal House”.

Before embarking on a long career as a respected actor, Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, anti-establishment cinema of the 1970s.

Over the decades, Sutherland has shown his range in more low-key — but still eccentric — roles in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” Most recently, he starred in the “Hunger Games” films. He never retired, working regularly until his death. A memoir, “Made Up, But Still True,” would be released in November.

“I love working. I love working passionately,” Sutherland told Charlie Rose in 1998. “I love feeling my hand fit into some other character’s glove. I feel an enormous freedom – time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

Born in St. John, New Brunswick, Donald McNichol Sutherland was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher. Raised in Nova Scotia, he was a disc jockey at his own radio station at age 14.

“When I was 13 or 14, I really thought that everything I felt was wrong and dangerous, and that God was going to kill me for it,” Sutherland told The New York Times in 1981. “My father always said, ‘Keep the open mouth. Shut up, Donnie, and maybe people will think you have character.

Sutherland started out as an engineering student at the University of Toronto, but switched to English and began acting in school theater productions. While studying in Toronto, she met Lois Hardwick, an aspiring actress. They married in 1959 but divorced seven years later.

After graduating in 1956, Sutherland attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts to study acting. Sutherland began appearing in West End plays and on British television. After moving to Los Angeles, he continued to move around until a series of war films changed his trajectory.

His first American film was “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played Vernon Pinkley, the psychopath who posed as an officer. 1970 saw the release of World War II’s “Kelly’s Heroes” and “MASH,” an acclaimed hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

“There are more challenges in character roles,” Sutherland told The Washington Post in 1970. “There is longevity. A good actor can show a different face in each film and not bore the audience.”

If Sutherland had had his way, Altman would have been fired from “MASH.” He and his colleague Elliott Gould were unhappy with the director’s unorthodox, improvisational style and fought to replace him. But the film exceeded anyone’s expectations, and Sutherland personally identified with its anti-war message. Speaking out against the Vietnam War, Sutherland, actress Jane Fonda and others founded Free Theater Associates in 1971. Banned by the Army because of their political views, they performed at venues near military bases in Southeast Asia in 1973.

Sutherland’s career as a leading man reached its peak in the 1970s, when he starred in films by the leading directors of the day – even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who often claimed to consider himself in 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 (“The Day of the Grasshopper”, 1975).

One of his best performances was as a detective in Alan Pakula’s “Klute” (1971). It was while filming “Klute” that he met Fonda, with whom he had a three-year relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actress Shirley Douglas. Married in 1966, he and Douglas divorced in 1971.

Sutherland had twins with Douglas in 1966: Rachel and Kiefer, who were named after Warren Kiefer, the writer of Sutherland’s first film, “Castle of the Living Dead.”

In 1974, the actor began living with actress Francine Racette, with whom he remained forever. They had three children: Roeg, born in 1974 and named after director Nicolas Roeg (“Don’t Look Now”); Rossif, born in 1978 and named after director Frederick Rossif; and Angus Redford, born in 1979 and named after Robert Redford.

It was Redford who, to the surprise of some, cast Sutherland as the father in his directorial debut, 1980’s “Ordinary People.” Redford’s drama about a beautiful suburban family torn apart by tragedy won four Oscars, including best picture.

Sutherland was overlooked by academia for most of his career. He was never nominated, but he received an honorary Oscar in 2017. However, he won an Emmy in 1995 for the TV movie “Citizen X” and was nominated for seven Golden Globes (including for his performances in “MASH” and “Ordinary People “), winning two – again for “Citizen X” and the 2003 TV movie “Road to War.”

“Ordinary People” also presaged a shift in Sutherland’s career toward more mature and sometimes less eccentric characters.

His debut on the New York stage in 1981, however, was terrible. He played Humbert Humbert in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and the reviews were relentless; closed after a dozen performances.

A downturn followed in the 1980s, thanks to flops like the 1981 satire “Gas” and the 1984 comedy “Crackers.”

But Sutherland continued to work steadily. He had a brief but memorable role in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991). He again played the Redford patriarch in his 1993 film, “Six Degrees of Separation.” He played track coach Bill Bowerman in 1998’s “Without Limits.”

Over the past decade, Sutherland has worked increasingly in television, most memorably on HBO’s “Path to War,” in which he played President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford. For a career launched by “MASH,” it was a fitting, if ironic, bookend.