Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland (born 17 July 1935) is a Canadian actor whose film career spans over seven decades.

He has received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Critics Choice Award.

He has been cited as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

Sutherland was born 17 July 1935 at the Saint John General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, the son of Dorothy Isobel (née McNichol; 1892–1956) and Frederick McLea Sutherland (1894–1983), who worked in sales and ran the local gas, electricity and bus company.

He is of Scottish, German and English ancestry.

As a child, he had rheumatic fever, hepatitis, and poliomyelitis.

Sutherland and his family lived in a farmhouse in Lakeside, New Brunswick, before moving to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia at the age of 12, where he spent his teenage years.

He obtained his first part-time job, at the age of 14, as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW.

Sutherland graduated from Bridgewater High School.

He then studied at Victoria University, an affiliated college of the University of Toronto, where he met his first wife Lois May Hardwick (not to be confused with the child star Lois Ann Hardwick), and graduated with a double major in engineering and drama.

He had at one point been a member of the "UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto.

He changed his mind about becoming an engineer, and left Canada for Britain in 1957, studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

After departing the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Sutherland spent a year and a half at the Perth Repertory Theatre in Scotland.

In the early-to-mid-1960s, Sutherland began to gain small roles in British films and TV (such as a hotel receptionist in The Sentimental Agent episode "A Very Desirable Plot" (1963)).

He was featured alongside Christopher Lee in horror films such as Castle of the Living Dead (1964) and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965).

He also had a supporting role in the Hammer Films production Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), with Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers.

He also appeared in the TV series The Saint, in the 1965 episode "The Happy Suicide".

In the same year, he appeared in the Cold War classic The Bedford Incident and in the TV series Gideon's Way, in the 1966 episode "The Millionaire's Daughter".

In 1966, Sutherland appeared in the BBC TV play Lee Oswald-Assassin, playing a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Givens (even though Givens himself was an African American).

In 1966 he also made a second, and more substantial appearance in The Saint (S5,E14).

The episode, "Escape Route", which was directed by the show's star, Roger Moore, who later recalled Sutherland "asked me if he could show it to some producers as he was up for an important role... they came to view a rough cut and he got The Dirty Dozen."

Sutherland rose to fame after starring in films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), and Kelly's Heroes (1970).

In 1967, he appeared in "The Superlative Seven", an episode of The Avengers.

The film, which starred Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and a number of other popular actors, was the 5th highest-grossing film of 1967 and MGM's highest-grossing movie of the year.

In 1968, after the breakthrough in the UK-filmed The Dirty Dozen, Sutherland left London for Hollywood.

He then appeared in two war films, playing the lead role as "Hawkeye" Pierce in Robert Altman's MASH in 1970; and, again in 1970, as hippie tank commander "Oddball" in Kelly's Heroes; his health was threatened by spinal meningitis contracted during its filming.

Sutherland starred with Gene Wilder in the 1970 comedy Start the Revolution Without Me.

He subsequently starred in many films both in leading and supporting roles, including Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Day of the Locust (1975), Fellini's Casanova (1976), 1900 (1976), Animal House (1978), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Ordinary People (1980), Eye of the Needle (1981), A Dry White Season (1989), Backdraft (1991), JFK (1991), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Without Limits (1998), The Italian Job (2003), and Pride & Prejudice (2005).

More recently, Sutherland portrayed President Snow in The Hunger Games franchise.

Sutherland has also received accolades for his television roles.

During the filming of the Academy Award-winning detective thriller Klute (1971), Sutherland had an intimate relationship with co-star Jane Fonda.

Sutherland and Fonda went on to co-produce and star together in the anti–Vietnam War documentary F.T.A. (1972), consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviews with American troops who were then on active service.

As a follow-up to their appearance in Klute, Sutherland and Fonda performed together in Steelyard Blues (1973), a "freewheeling, Age-of-Aquarius, romp-and-roll caper" from the writer David S. Ward.

He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) in 1978, a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012 and received the Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) in 2019.

He is the father of actors Kiefer Sutherland, Rossif Sutherland, and Angus Sutherland.

In October 2023, Canada Post issued a stamp in his honour, commemorating his career as one of Canada's most respected and versatile actors.

For his portrayal of Colonel Mikhail Fetisov in Citizen X (1995) he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

Sutherland has received various honours including inductions into the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2000 and Hollywood Walk of Fame 2011.

He played Adam Czerniaków in Uprising (2001), and Clark Clifford in Path to War (2002) earning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

In 2017, he received an Academy Honorary Award.