Donald Sutherland Timeline

Donald Sutherland 23

1935 – 2024 A dynasty of actors -- five children, all named for directors Sutherland's five children include three actors: Kiefer Sutherland, who becomes a major star through the television series 24 and a filmography of his own; Rossif Sutherland; and Angus Sutherland. All are named after directors their father worked with: Kiefer after Warren Kiefer (Castle of the Living Dead), Rossif after Frederic Rossif, Angus's middle name Redford after Robert Redford, and Roeg after Nicolas Roeg. His granddaughter Sarah Sutherland also acts. The naming convention is itself a kind of autobiography -- a filmography encoded in a family tree.
1935 – 2024 His legacy -- 200 roles and a life well lived Sutherland's legacy is the sheer range and volume of his work: more than 200 film and television roles across six decades, from B-movie horror to Fellini, from Altman to The Hunger Games, from Ordinary People to Animal House. He was never afraid of a role -- good, bad or ugly, as Kiefer says. He worked with Altman, Roeg, Fellini, Bertolucci, Stone, Redford and Spielberg. He was placed on a CIA watchlist for opposing a war. He named his children after directors. He was the greatest actor never nominated for a competitive Oscar, until the Academy finally corrected the record. He died in Miami, far from Saint John, New Brunswick, but his emotional home remained in Georgeville, Quebec, where he summered with his children. A life well lived.
1935 – 2024 Honours -- Officer and Companion of the Order of Canada Sutherland is made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978 and elevated to Companion -- the highest level -- in 2019. He is inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame (2000), receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2011, next to his son Kiefer's), receives the Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France (2012), and in 2023 is honoured with a commemorative postage stamp by Canada Post. The Honorary Oscar in 2017 completes the set.
1935 – 2024 The anti-war activist -- on the watchlist Sutherland is a lifelong political activist. With Jane Fonda he co-founds the Free The Army tour in 1971, performing anti-war sketches for 60,000 active-duty troops in Hawaii, Okinawa, the Philippines and Japan as an alternative to Bob Hope's USO shows. The CIA places him on the NSA watchlist from 1971 to 1973. He opposes the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He blogs for The Huffington Post in support of Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. He fights for the right of Canadian expatriates to vote, a cause vindicated by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2019.
1935 – 2024 What made him extraordinary -- suspicion and empathy Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times writes of Sutherland: "He didn't disappear into a role, not exactly; he was too distinctive for that. More often, the role disappeared into him, and the result was something unforgettable." Owen Gleiberman of Variety writes that in 1970 "he was the coolest movie star on the planet. The moment I saw him in M*A*S*H, I knew he was the person I wanted to be." Helen Mirren calls him "one of the smartest actors I ever worked with." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian calls him "an aristocrat of screen actors." The common thread: a marriage of suspicion and empathy, intelligence and feeling, that no other actor of his era could quite replicate.
1935 – 1953 Donald Sutherland born in Saint John Donald McNichol Sutherland is born on 17 July 1935 at the Saint John General Hospital in New Brunswick, Canada. His father, Frederick McLea Sutherland, runs the local gas, electricity and bus company; his mother, Dorothy Isobel McNichol, is of Scottish descent. As a child Donald suffers from rheumatic fever, hepatitis and polio, leaving one leg shorter than the other. The family lives first in Hampton, then moves back to Saint John, then to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, when he is 12. At 14 he gets his first job as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW.
1953 – 1958 University of Toronto -- engineering and drama Sutherland studies at the University of Toronto and its affiliate Victoria University, graduating in 1958 with a dual degree in engineering and drama. He is a member of the UC Follies comedy troupe. He decides against engineering and leaves Canada for Britain in 1957 to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). He drops out in his first year and moves to Scotland, where he acts at the Perth Repertory Theatre for 18 months. His roommate is the actor Michael Sheard.
1960 – 1966 British television and horror films -- the apprenticeship Through the early 1960s Sutherland gains small roles in British television and low-budget horror films: Castle of the Living Dead (1964) alongside Christopher Lee; Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965); Die! Die! My Darling! (1965) with Tallulah Bankhead; and The Bedford Incident (1965). He appears in episodes of The Saint, The Avengers and Gideon's Way. It is on The Saint that his career changes: Roger Moore, directing an episode in which Sutherland appears, allows him to show the rough cut to producers, and Sutherland lands The Dirty Dozen.
1966 – 1972 Three marriages -- Hardwick, Douglas, Racette Sutherland marries three times. His first marriage, to Lois May Hardwick, lasts from 1959 to 1966. His second, to actress Shirley Douglas -- daughter of Tommy Douglas, the social-democratic former premier of Saskatchewan -- produces twin children: Kiefer and Rachel (born 1966). They divorce in 1970. He then meets actress Francine Racette on the set of Alien Thunder in the early 1970s; they marry and remain together until his death. They have three sons -- Rossif, Angus and Roeg -- all named after directors Sutherland has worked with. Kiefer is named after the director of his first film.
1967 The Dirty Dozen -- breakthrough Sutherland appears in The Dirty Dozen (1967), a World War II action film starring Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson. It is the fifth highest-grossing film of 1967 and MGM's biggest hit of the year. Sutherland, playing the dim-witted but likeable Vernon Pinkley, steals scenes from established stars. In 1968 he leaves London for Hollywood.
1970 M*A*S*H and Kelly's Heroes -- countercultural icon In 1970 Sutherland plays the lead role of Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman's antiwar comedy M*A*S*H and the hippie tank commander Oddball in Kelly's Heroes alongside Clint Eastwood. M*A*S*H wins the Palme d'Or at Cannes and becomes one of the defining films of the era. During the filming of Kelly's Heroes in Yugoslavia, Sutherland contracts spinal meningitis and briefly dies before being resuscitated: "I saw the blue tunnel and, like, crap... I could hear them making my funeral arrangements." He is 34 years old and the coolest actor in Hollywood.
1971 – 1972 Klute and Jane Fonda -- love and anti-war activism Sutherland stars opposite Jane Fonda in the detective thriller Klute (1971), playing the inscrutable private detective John Klute. During filming the two begin an intimate relationship. Together they co-produce and star in the anti-Vietnam War documentary F.T.A. (1972), performing sketches outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviewing troops on active service. Declassified documents later reveal that Sutherland was placed on the NSA watchlist between 1971 and 1973 at the request of the CIA because of his anti-war activities.
1973 Don't Look Now -- Venice and grief Sutherland stars opposite Julie Christie in Nicolas Roeg's psychological horror Don't Look Now (1973), set in a wintry Venice and centred on a couple grieving the death of their daughter. The film contains one of the most celebrated -- and controversial -- love scenes in cinema history. Sutherland is nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. It is widely regarded as his finest performance and one of the greatest British films of the 1970s.
1975 – 1978 Fellini, Bertolucci, Altman -- the auteurs' actor In the mid-to-late 1970s Sutherland works with Europe's greatest directors: as the title character in Federico Fellini's Casanova (1976); as the sadistic Italian fascist Attila in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic 1900 (1976); and in war film The Eagle Has Landed (1976) opposite Michael Caine. He is also cast as pot-smoking Professor Dave Jennings in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Offered either $40,000 upfront or two per cent of the gross, he takes the cash. The film grosses $141.6 million.
1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- the pointing scream Sutherland plays a health inspector in Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), alongside Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy and Jeff Goldblum. Janet Maslin of The New York Times writes that he is "by turns personable and opaque, affecting in a way that he hasn't been since Klute." The film's final image -- Sutherland's character pointing and emitting an inhuman scream -- becomes one of the most iconic shots in science fiction cinema.
1980 Ordinary People -- the grieving father Sutherland plays Calvin Jarrett, a conflicted and grieving father, in Robert Redford's directorial debut Ordinary People (1980), alongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. Vincent Canby of The New York Times writes that he "realizes his best film role in years." The film wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. Sutherland is nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor but is not nominated for the Oscar -- the most glaring omission in a career defined by the Academy's refusal to recognise him.
1989 – 1995 A Dry White Season, JFK, Citizen X Through the late 1980s and 1990s Sutherland takes a sequence of powerful supporting roles: the apartheid drama A Dry White Season (1989) alongside Marlon Brando; the mysterious intelligence officer "X" in Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), hinting at military-industrial-complex involvement in the Kennedy assassination; and the Soviet official Mikhail Fetisov in the HBO film Citizen X (1995), which wins him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Film.
2000 – 2005 Space Cowboys, The Italian Job and Pride & Prejudice Sutherland plays an astronaut alongside Clint Eastwood in Space Cowboys (2000); John Bridger in the heist film The Italian Job (2003); and Mr Bennet in Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice (2005) opposite Keira Knightley. Of Pride and Prejudice, The Independent writes that he delivers "arguably the most moving scene of the movie" when he gives his consent for Elizabeth to marry Mr Darcy. The role demonstrates what he does better than almost any actor of his generation: the conveyance of deep emotion through restraint.
2010 Olympic flag bearer -- Vancouver 2010 Sutherland narrates the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and serves as one of the Olympic flag bearers. It is a moment of national recognition for a man who has lived outside Canada for most of his adult life but has never changed his citizenship. He has maintained a summer residence in Georgeville, Quebec, since 1977, which he calls his "emotional home."
2012 – 2015 President Snow -- The Hunger Games From 2012 to 2015 Sutherland portrays President Coriolanus Snow, the tyrannical leader of Panem, in four Hunger Games films. The role -- menacing, courtly, absolutely controlled -- introduces him to a new generation of audiences and becomes one of the defining villain performances of 21st-century cinema. He brings to Snow the same unsettling quality he has deployed throughout his career: the sense that intelligence and cruelty are not opposites but close neighbours.
2017 Honorary Oscar -- "indelible characters" On 6 September 2017 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces that Sutherland will receive an Honorary Oscar "for a lifetime of indelible characters, rendered with unwavering truthfulness." He is honoured at the ceremony by Jennifer Lawrence, Colin Farrell and Whoopi Goldberg. It is his only Academy Award in a career spanning six decades -- a belated acknowledgement of the most glaring omission in the Academy's history. He is widely considered the greatest actor never to have received a competitive Oscar nomination.
2018 – 2023 Trust, The Undoing and Lawmen: Bass Reeves -- final roles In his final years Sutherland continues to work relentlessly: as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty in the FX series Trust (2018); opposite Helen Mirren in The Leisure Seeker (2017); alongside Brad Pitt in Ad Astra (2019); with Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman in the HBO series The Undoing (2020); and as Judge Isaac Parker in Lawmen: Bass Reeves (2023) for Paramount+. David Oyelowo, who works with him on what proves to be his final screen performance, describes him as "an inquisitive, hungry artist still on the hunt for the truth."
2024 Donald Sutherland dies aged 88 Donald Sutherland dies on 20 June 2024 at the University of Miami hospital, where he has been in hospice care with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He is 88. His son Kiefer writes: "I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls him "one of the greats." Jane Fonda writes: "Donald was a brilliant actor and a complex man. I am heartbroken."