Donald Sutherland
Canadian actor (1935–2024)
Donald McNichol Sutherland CC (17 July 1935 – 20 June 2024) was a Canadian actor and anti-war activist whose film career spanned over seven decades. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018. Sutherland's films include M*A*S*H (1970), Klute (1971), and Don't Look Now (1973). Much later, he portrayed President Snow in The Hunger Games franchise. The honours Sutherland received included the Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) in 2019. He was the father of actors Kiefer Sutherland, Rossif Sutherland, and Angus Sutherland.
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Quotes
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- I love to work. I passionately love to work. I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other character. I find a huge freedom — time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.
- Interview on the film Without Limits, on Charlie Rose (10 September 1998) [@12:08]
- [Asked if he was conscious of being an unusual actor] Well, I was always cast as an artistic homicidal maniac. But at least I was artistic!
- Referring to his early roles while living in the UK in the early to mid-1960s in an interview, cited in "Total recall: John Patterson meets Donald Sutherland", The Guardian (3 September 2005)
- We had a housekeeper in Canada, a wonderful woman, whose father raped all of his daughters. She went to see him when he was dying and said, "I'm here to forgive you." He said, "Forgiveness for what? It was my right."
- From an interview, as cited in "Donald Sutherland: 'I want Hunger Games to stir up a revolution'", The Guardian (19 November 2013)
- I heard a voice saying hello and I looked down. Standing down there was a very small Kate Bush. … She wanted to explain what her video was about. I let her in. She sat down, said some stuff. All I heard was "Wilhelm Reich". I’d taken an underground copy of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism with me when I went to film Bertolucci’s Novecento in Parma. Reich’s work informed the psychological foundations of Attila Mellanchini, the character Bernardo had cast me to play. Everything about Reich echoed through me. He was there then and now he was here. Sitting across from me in the person of the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect. She talked some more. I said OK and we made Cloudbusting. She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderful. I love that I did it.
- On meeting Kate Bush, as she pitched her concept of the music video for "Cloudbusting" to him, as quoted in "The story behind Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting video", DAZED (30 October 2015); also quoted in "The Funny Story of How Donald Sutherland Ended Up in Kate Bush’s Cinematic Cloudbusting Video", by John Russell, People (20 June 2024)
- I’m really hoping that in some movie I’m doing, I die — but I die, me, Donald — and they’re able to use my funeral and the coffin … That would be absolutely ideal. I would love that.
Quotes about Sutherland
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- I wanted it to be a piece of film rather than a video promotional clip. I wanted it to be a short piece of film that would hopefully do justice to the original book and let people understand the story that couldn’t really be explained in the song. So we wanted a great actor — we thought of Donald Sutherland — and he was so encouraging and made it so easy for me. Whenever we were acting, he was my father. I just had to react to him like a child. He made it very easy.
- Kate Bush, on working with Sutherland in her video Cloudbusting (1985), in an MTV interview (October 1985)
- Donald was a brilliant actor and a complex man who shared quite a few adventures with me, such as the FTA Show, an anti-Vietnam war tour that performed for 60,000 active duty soldiers, sailors, and marines in Hawaii, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Japan in 1971. I am heartbroken.
- Donald Sutherland was one of the smartest actors I ever worked with. He had a wonderful enquiring brain, and a great knowledge on a wide variety of subjects. He combined this great intelligence with a deep sensitivity, and with a seriousness about his profession as an actor. This all made him into the legend of film that he became.
- 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.
- We’ve lost one of the greats. Donald Sutherland brought a level of brilliance to his craft few could match. A remarkable, legendary actor — and a great Canadian.
