Donald Sutherland dies aged 88

The Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, star of movies together with The Starvation Video games and Do not Look Now, has died at 88 after an extended sickness.

His son, the actor Kiefer Sutherland, mentioned: “With a heavy coronary heart, I inform you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has handed away. I personally suppose one of the vital necessary actors within the historical past of movie.

“By no means daunted by a task, good, dangerous or ugly. He cherished what he did and did what he cherished, and one can by no means ask for greater than that. A life properly lived.”

Sutherland had nearly 200 credit to his title in a profession spanning greater than half a century.

The information was met with an outpouring of help and tributes.

Actor Rob Lowe, who starred alongside Sutherland within the miniseries Salem’s Lot, known as his former co-star “one among our best actors”.

“It was my honor to work with him a few years in the past, and I’ll always remember his charisma and skill,” he wrote on X/Twitter.

Cary Elwes, a co-star within the 2001 tv movie Rebellion, mentioned he was “devastated” by Sutherland’s loss of life.

“Our hearts are breaking for you,” he advised Kiefer in an Instagram message. “So grateful to have identified [and] labored with him. Sending our love.

Born in New Brunswick, Canada, Sutherland began as a radio information reporter earlier than travelling to London in 1957 to review on the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Artwork.

He then took on small roles in British movie and tv.

His earliest high-profile roles had been in struggle movies together with 1967’s The Soiled Dozen, and Kelly’s Heroes and M*A*S*H from 1970.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recalled feeling “deeply, deeply star-struck” when he first met Sutherland.

“My ideas exit to Kiefer and the whole Sutherland household, in addition to all Canadians who’re little question saddened to be taught, as I’m proper now,” he mentioned.

“He was a person with a robust presence, a brilliance in his craft and really, really an amazing Canadian artist,” he added.

US President Joe Biden mentioned Sutherland was a “one-of-a-kind actor who impressed and entertained the world for many years”.

Ron Howard, who directed Sutherland within the 1991 movie Backdraft, mentioned that he was “one of the vital clever, fascinating [and] engrossing movie actors of all time”.

Jane Fonda was Sutherland’s co-star in Alan J Pakula’s 1971 thriller, Klute, a few detective whose hunt for a lacking individual is assisted by a high-priced name woman.

They dated for 2 years.

In a tribute on Instagram, Fonda described Sutherland as a “good actor” with whom she shared “fairly a number of adventures”, together with performances to lively servicemen throughout an anti-Vietnam struggle tour in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.

“I’m heartbroken,” she added.

The Seventies additionally noticed him play an IRA member in The Eagle Has Landed, a pot-smoking school professor in Nationwide Lampoon’s Animal Home and the lead within the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Physique Snatchers.

Within the Eighties, Sutherland performed the daddy of a suicidal teenager within the Oscar-winning Peculiar Folks.

He turned to tv within the 2000s, showing in such sequence as Soiled Horny Cash and Commander-in-Chief.

Regardless of his quite a few roles, he was by no means nominated for an Oscar. He did obtain an honorary Academy Award in 2017.

Sutherland was identified for his political activism all through his profession, and protested towards the Vietnam struggle alongside Fonda.

He additionally channelled his beliefs into a few of his roles, together with The Starvation Video games: Mockingjay – Half 2, the place he performed the tyrannical President Snow.

Sutherland advised the BBC in 2015 that he hoped the movie’s socio-political message would assist younger followers develop into extra conscious of the world round them.

“We requested the kindest man on the planet to painting probably the most corrupt, ruthless dictator we’ve ever seen,” the official Starvation Video games X account posted following the announcement of his loss of life.

“Such was the ability and talent of Donald Sutherland’s appearing that he created yet one more indelible character amongst many others that outlined his legendary profession. We’re privileged to have identified and labored with him, and our ideas are together with his household.”

He additionally advised the BBC that the most important adjustments he’d seen within the business was that actors had been making “some huge cash”.

“I do not suppose anyone of my era turned an actor to generate profits. It by no means occurred to me. I made £8 per week right here [on stage in London]. After I starred in a play on the Royal Courtroom, I made £17 per week, that was in 1964,” he mentioned.

On the time, he mentioned he had no plans to retire from appearing.

“It is a passionate endeavour. Retirement for actors is spelt ‘DEATH’.” he mentioned.

His memoir, Made Up, However Nonetheless True, is because of be revealed in November.