Donald Sutherland Biography

MARITAL STATUS
Professions Actor , Producer , Executive Producer more
Birth name Donald McNichol Sutherland
Nationality Canadian
Birth July 17, 1935 (Saint-John, New Brunswick – Canada)

BIOGRAPHY
Father of actor-director Kiefer Sutherland .

Donald Sutherland first distinguished himself as a disc jockey for local Canadian radio stations, then did theater at the University of Toronto. Encouraged by a local critic, Herb Whitaker , he left for England where he attended the London Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Donald Sutherland debuted on the big screen in 1963 in an Italian series called Castle of the Living Dead . After these original beginnings, to say the least, he obtained a small role in the war film Aux posts de combat (1965) but it was in 1967, when Robert Aldrich hired him to play one of the Twelve Bastards , that he gets his first major role. However, the public discovered him in 1970 with Mash , where he played an extroverted doctor. His career was initially punctuated with eccentric and offbeat performances.

With the role of the inspector in Klute (1971) opposite Jane Fonda , Donald Sutherland established himself in the dramatic register. A pacifist activist, he collaborated with the same Jane Fonda on the screenplay and direction of FTA (1972), which sets out the American commitment in Vietnam. Very prolific, the actor accumulated compositions of all genres: architect in Ne vous voir pas (1973), notable pathetic in The Day of the Flail (1975), fascist in 1900 (1976), interpreter of Fellini’s Casanova , spy in The Eagle flew away (id.) or even mutant hunter in The Invasion of the Profanateurs (1978), he even took the time to play under the direction of Claude Chabrol ( Les Liens du Sang , 1978).

We sometimes see him playing the roles of discreet men, such as an Afrikaner history professor fighting against apartheid in A White and Dry Season , but it is the roles of odious and extreme men that are the most recurrent in his career. . He is thus the corrupt and immoral prison director of High Security , the worrying and conspiratorial soldier of Alerte or even the crooked political advisor of High Treason .

Donald Sutherland marks certain films with lightning passages. His performances as a mad arsonist in Backdraft and as a mysterious and high-ranking witness in JFK demonstrate his strength of composition and his charisma. In 2000,thirty years later Gold for the brave in Space Cowboys . Very eclectic, he recently moved from the action film Italian Heist , 2002) to the historical drama ( Return to Cold Mountain , 2003) via the costume film ( Pride and Prejudice , 2004).

Also active on the small screen, Donald Sutherland plays the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Commander in Chief , the formidable business patriarch Patrick “Tripp” Darling III in Dirty Sexy Money or even Michel Dorn, a member of the international criminal court in Crossing Lines . At the same time, the actor does not forget the cinema and is thus showing in numerous feature films, including the adventure film L’Amour de l’or (2008), the action film Le Flingueur (2011 ), the comedy How to kill your boss? as well as the four films linked to the lucrative teenage Hunger Games franchise where he plays the tyrannical President Snow.

At over 80 years old, Donald Sutherland is still active in front of the camera as evidenced by his performances in the series Ice as well as in the films Basmati Blues , Measure of a Man and The Leisure Seeker .