Canada: Donald Sutherland, the well-known Canadian actor who captivated and mesmerized audiences in movies like MASH, Klute, and The Hunger Games, passed away at the age of 88.
According to his son, actor Kiefer Sutherland, the actor passed away on Thursday. The actor’s long career spanned the 1960s and the 2020s.
Among his most well-known performances were those of Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s MASH, which takes place in a Korean War-era military field hospital, and of a hopeless father in Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning feature debut, Ordinary People.
His portrayal as President Coriolanus Snow, the dictatorial ruler in The Hunger Games and its sequels, garnered him admirers from a new age. It was a role he deliberately pursued.
Donald McNichol Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, in St John, New Brunswick. His parents are a math teacher and a salesperson. Raised in the northeastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia, he participated in school plays while attending college and afterwards pursued acting studies at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
His big break in Hollywood came when he played officer-turned-psychopath Vernon Pinkley in the 1967 war movie The Dirty Dozen, following tiny roles on British television. When MASH came out in 1970, Sutherland became a star because he connected with the movie’s antiwar theme.
Prolific in his denunciation of the Vietnam War, Sutherland co-founded the Free Theater Associates in 1971 with actress Jane Fonda, with whom he was romantically involved and co-starred in Klute. In 1973, they performed in Southeast Asian locations close to military bases despite being banned by the army due to their political beliefs.
Sutherland was listed on the National Security Agency’s Watch List from 1971 to 1973, according to records that were disclosed in 2017.
One of Sutherland’s best roles was that of a detective in Alan Pakula’s Klute, when he first got to know Fonda, and as a bereaved couple with Julie Christie in Nicolas Roeg’s psychological horror picture Don’t Look Now.
As his death was revealed on Thursday, condolences were expressed in droves.
Sutherland took home two Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Emmy. Kiefer was one of his five children from his three marriages. Made Up, But Still True, his book, is slated for release in November.
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