“When you’re working for a good director, you become subjective and submissive. You become his concubine. All that you’re seeking is his pleasure.”
Donald Sutherland
Introduction
Donald Sutherland was that rugged actor who you just loved to watch. Long-haired and bearded with a Canadian lilt, he looked like someone who had just got out of bed and walked into a studio for a day’s work. He came from the unique school of Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole, with an off-kilter appeal that gained him more than 190 film and television appearances. A Canadian actor who became prominent in the 1970s with brilliant performances in Don’t Look Now, M*A*S*H, Kelly’s Heroes and Klute.
The Masterclass
Born in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1935, Donald started life as a radio news reporter before travelling to London in 1957. He studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He would go on to be a bit of an actor in programmes including Man of the World, The Saint, and The Avengers, as well as films such as Hammer Horror Film Fanatic and Amicus anthology Dr Terror’s House of Horrors. He became prominent in the 1970 Second World War epic Kelly’s Heroes, where he played Sgt. Oddball alongside Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas. He would also star in the film adaptation of M*A*S*H the same year as Hawkeye Pierce, alongside Elliott Gould, Alan Alda and Robert Altman. He almost died during this period after contracting meningitis.
As his career progressed, Sutherland’s acting roles became more radical. His roles include his lead part in the 1971 film Klute as Detective John Klute, opposite Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels, a sex worker. This was the first of Donald’s trilogy of paranoia films, FTA and Nicholas Roeg’s 1973 psychological thriller, set in Venice with Sutherland and Julie Christie grieving the death of their drowned daughter. It is a film that contains an infamous sex scene between the two cuts, with them getting dressed afterwards. So authentic was it that they had to deny it was real.
He would also star in Federico Fellini’s Casanova, played murderous fascist Attila Melanchini in Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic 1900 and featured alongside Michael Caine as a duplicitous IRA man in the war thriller The Eagle Has Landed Animal House and Robert Redford’s 1980 debut film Ordinary People after Gene Hackman dropped out of the role. Roles would follow in character parts in Six Degrees of Separation, Oliver Stone’s JFK, A Time to Kill, Space Cowboys and Pride and Prejudice. A prominent part in Hunger Games, Stephen King’s Moonfall and most recently in the television series Lawmen.
Sutherland was married three times to Lois Hardwick between 1959 and 1966, Shirley Douglas (1966-1970) and Francine Racette, whom he married in 1972. His posthumous memoir Made Up, But Still True will be released in November 2024 and described as “an unfiltered account of his life that is deeply insightful, emotional, and often very funny”. Donald passed away, aged 88, on June 20, 2024, after a long illness.
