After a protracted illness, Donald Sutherland, the adored actor who played in several movies like The Dirty Dozen, MASH, and Klute, Animal House, Ordinary People, Pride & Prejudice, and The Hunger Games franchise, and who was honored with an Emmy for Citizen X, passed away in Miami on Thursday. He was eighty-eight.
The 2017 Honorary Oscar winner is also the father of experienced CAA Media Finance executive Roeg Sutherland and Emmy-winning actor Kiefer Sutherland from 24 and Designated Survivor. To Deadline, CAA confirmed the information.
He developed a dead-serious, sardonic, and laconic style in some of his most well-known parts. This was the case for characters such as the collected amateur murder investigator John Klute, who played opposite Jane Fonda’s frightened and unpredictable call girl Bree Daniels in Klute; Hawkeye Pierce in the movie MASH, opposite Elliott Gould’s hulking Trapper John; and the doubting John Baxter in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, who doesn’t trust wife Laura (Julie Christie) when she says their recently deceased daughter is communicating with the afterlife.
One of Sutherland’s earliest examples of a shift of pace was his portrayal of a sadistic fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1976 epic 1900, in which he joyfully swings a toddler by the heels and slams the boy’s head against a wall.
Donald Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, on July 17, 1935. Over the course of more than 60 years, he accumulated about 200 film and television credits, ranging from appearances as a guest on episodes of 1960s shows like Suspense, The Avengers, Court Martial, and The Odd Man, to the Paramount+ drama Bass Reeves from last year. His great movie breakthrough was in the star-studded 1967 World War II film The Dirty Dozen, starring Telly Savalas, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, and misfit convict Vernon Pinkley. Directed by Robert Aldrich. A major box office success, it continues to be a landmark American military film.
In Robert Altman’s 1970 Korean War dramedy MASH, he played Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce. This was his next major role. Five Oscar nominations were received for the alternately terrifying and amusing movie about the happenings at a mobile Army surgical hospital, including Best Picture, which was won by Ring Lardner Jr.’s razor-sharp script. It also gave rise to MAS*H, the phenomenally popular CBS series that ran from 1972 to 1983 and starred Alan Alda as Hawkeye. The title of the show was set apart from the film with asterisks.
Sutherland then starred in another highly anticipated war film, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), costarring with Clint Eastwood, Don Rickles, Savalas, and others as Sgt. Oddball. This paved the way for what was arguably his breakout role in the 1971 Alan J. Pakula crime drama Klute. He portrayed John Klute, a New York sleuth hired to track down a missing chemical company boss, opposite Fonda. For the performance, Fonda received her first Oscar, and Andy and Dave Lewis received a nomination for their original screenplay.
Sutherland’s next major film was Nicolas Roeg’s psychological thriller Don’t Look Now. He then reteamed with Gould for the international spy comedy SPY*S in 1974, and Day of the Locust, a Hollywood production, in 1975. He portrayed accountant Homer Simpson, who harbors feelings for Black’s aspirant actress Faye Greener, in the film costarring William Atherton, Karen Black, and Burgess Meredith.
With his film career in full swing, Sutherland starred in The Eagle Has Landed (1976), a big-name war film starring Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, and later had a small part in The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a comedy directed by John Landis and written by future Airplane! directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker.
Sutherland starred in three different films in 1978: the beloved early 1960s fraternity romp Animal House, also directed by Landis; the heist comedy The Great Train Robbery, starring Sean Connery and Lesley-Anne Down; and the horror thriller remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum.
In the latter, he played English lit professor Dave Jennings of Faber College in a supporting but important role. In one scene, his deadpan persona lectures his students on John Milton, and in another, he is seen having sex with student Katy (Karen Allen) and notoriously exposes his ass while reaching into a cabinet. Boon (Peter Riegert), a member of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, was in a relationship with Katy. John Vernon, Amadeus Oscar nominee Tom Hulce, Bruce McGill, Tim Matheson, Stephen Furst, John Belushi, and Kevin Bacon were included in the cast.
Following his role in the 1980 comedy Nothing Personal alongside Suzanne Somers of Three’s Company, Sutherland went on to make some of his most successful films. He portrayed Calvin Jarrett in Robert Redford’s generational drama Ordinary People, which won four Oscars, including Best Picture. Jarrett was a dad grappling with the suicide attempt of one son and grieving for another. Along with Elizabeth McGovern, Judd Hirsch, Mary Tyler Moore, and Timothy Hutton, the film’s famous cast includes many others.
Sutherland kept up his cinematic career in the 1980s. He played a significant part in Ron Howard’s 1991 firefighter thriller Backdraft, as an imprisoned pyromaniac who provides assistance to investigators by stating that the arsonist they are after must also be a fireman.
During the 1990s, Sutherland acted in movies such as Six Degrees of Separation, which starred Will Smith, Stockard Channing, and Ian McKellen; JFK, in which he played a composite character named Mr. X; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which he plays Merrick, who helps and persuades the titular character played by Kristy Swanson that she is the Chosen One.
In HBO’s 1995 serial killer thriller telepic Citizen X, which starred Max von Sydow and Stephen Rea, the actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Russian Col. Mikhail Fetisov. That same year, he had a supporting role in Wolfgang Peterson’s spreading-virus film Outbreak, which starred Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, and Morgan Freeman.
Alongside Robert Carlyle and Mira Sorvino, he starred in the 2006 Lifetime miniseries Human Trafficking, which garnered him an Emmy nomination.
Into the 2010s, Sutherland kept up his acting career, appearing in movies such as 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, A Time to Kill, Shadow Conspiracy, Fallen, Instinct, The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, Fierce People, and Horrible Bosses. But his most well-known job would likely be his next major one.
He was chosen to play Panem’s fascist tyrant, President Coriolanus Snow, in the 2012 film The Hunger Games. In the follow-up films Catching Fire (2013) and Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2 (2014), he also played the main antagonist. The movies that were adapted from Suzanne Collins’ young adult novels were worldwide hits that broke box office records and elevated lead actress Jennifer Lawrence to stardom.
Sutherland’s Snow, who wielded an iron grip over the dystopian world of Panem, tormented the protagonist Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) for a considerable amount of time after she triumphed over him in the cruel competition, seeing in her the seed of revolt. There were rumors that he poisoned people, and he always had a fresh rose attached to his lapel.
Tom Blyth played the younger Snow in last year’s prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes; Sutherland was absent from the film. In the novel that served as the basis for the movie, Collins gave a synopsis of Snow’s past. Prior to accepting the political role, Snow served as Rachel Zegler’s young, power-hungry tutor to Lucy Gray Baird.
For the most of his last years, Sutherland kept up his filmmaking, starring in movies like Moonfall (2022) and Ad Astra (2019), although he also made a number of small-screen appearances. In the 2007–09 ABC family dramedy Dirty Sexy Money, he costarred with Peter Krause, Jill Clayburgh, and William Baldwin. He also costarred in the 2010 Starz miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, which starred Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, and Matthew Macfadyen, Hayley Atwell and Eddie Redmayne.
Among Sutherland’s many television appearances are co-starring roles in the crime drama Crossing Lines (2013–15, NBC, Ovation, USA) and as J. Paul Getty (2018, FX, drama Trust). His performance as Clark Clifford in HBO’s John Frankenheimer-directed telefilm Path to War, which explored how President Lyndon Johnson’s administration handled the Vietnam War in the middle of the 1960s, earned him a Golden Globe. Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, and other actors were in the cast.
Additionally, he starred in the first season of the Audience Network series Ice alongside Jeremy Sisto, Cam Gigandet, and Ray Winstone; in the 2022 crime drama Swimming with Sharks on Roku Channel alongside Kiernan Shipka and Diane Kruger; and as the father of Nicole Kidman’s lead character in the 2020 HBO miniseries The Undoing Grace Fraser.
In 1996, Sutherland provided the voice of Bart Simpson in an episode from Season 7. He portrayed Hollis Hurlbut in “Lisa the Iconoclast,” the curator of the museum run by the Springfield Historical Society, who refutes Lisa Simpson’s claim that the town’s founder was a ruthless pirate.
In Taylor Sheridan’s 2023 Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves, he portrayed Isaac Parker, a formidable and powerful judge in the Fort Smith Courthouse with a convoluted past, in a recurring role. This was his last TV performance.
In addition, Sutherland starred in the music video for the 1985 song “Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush. It was the follow-up song to her breakthrough smash “Running Up That Hill” from her album Hounds of Love. Watch it right here.
In addition, Sutherland was the writer and producer of the 1972 movie FTA, the executive producer of Steelyard Blues the next year, and the writer and director of the 2015 animated telefilm Pirate’s Passage.
The sole time Sutherland appeared on Broadway was in the infamous flop Lolita (1981), an Edward Albee adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov novel that opened and closed in ten days in March, where he played Humbert Humbert.
His numerous and varied achievements include nominations for BAFTA, Kids’ Choice, MTV Movie & TV, and Critics Choice awards; an NAACP Image Award for Klute; and a 2019 Fondazione Mimmo Rotella Award at the Venice Film Festival for The Burnt Orange Heresy. In addition to being a member of the Cannes Competition jury in 2016, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011 and shared the 2017 Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Agnès Varda, Charles Burnett, and Owen Roizman.
