Kiefer Sutherland Biography

CIVIL STATUS
Professions Actor, Executive Producer, Director more
Birth Name Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland
Nationality Canadian
Born 21 December 1966 (London – Great Britain)
BIOGRAPHY
The son of Donald Sutherland and Canadian actress Shirley Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland was destined for a career as an actor at an early age and had his first major role in Throne of Straw at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. After continuing his apprenticeship in various workshops in Toronto, Canada, he made his screen debut opposite his father in Herbert Ross’s Max Dugan Returns (1983), and then starred in A Spring in the Snow (1984), a drama for which he was nominated for a Genie Award.

The actor then moved to the United States where he made his first appearance on television in the episode “The Mascot” (1985), directed by Steven Spielberg as part of the Fantastic Stories series. The same year, he played an unbalanced mute in Trapped in Silence, a television movie never before seen in France. In 1986, he had his first international success with Rob Reiner’s Stand by me. From then on, he alternated genres: comedy with Lost Generation (1987), sentimental drama with Promised Land (id.), westerns with Young Guns (1988) and Young Guns 2 (1990), and thrillers with The Disappeared (1993). But it was his performances as a medical student, alongside his partner in the city Julia Roberts, in The Forbidden Experiment (1990), as a lieutenant under Jack Nicholson in Men of Honor (1992), as Athos in The Three Musketeers (1993) and as a modern cowboy in Two Cowboys in New York (1994) that made him known to the general public.

In 1996, Kiefer Sutherland did not hesitate to play “detestable” characters: a recidivist rapist in Beyond the Law, a disfigured psychopath in Freeway, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in The Right to Kill? (id.), and then, a few years later, Colin Farrell’s mysterious interlocutor in Phone Game (2003). In 1997, he directed his first feature film: La Dernière cavale, a thriller that he played alongside Vincent Gallo. He continued his directing career in 1999 with Woman Wanted, a romantic drama in which he fell in love with Holly Hunter.

At the same time, Kiefer Sutherland tried his hand at science fiction, making a name for himself in Alex Proyas’ dark Dark City (1998) and then in the war film via Chungkai, the Survivors’ Camp (2001). His favourite genre remains the thriller, as evidenced by his roles in Breaking Point (1998), The Eye of the Killer (1999) and Desert Saints (2002). The general public rediscovered him in 2001 as a neurotic agent of the Anti-Terrorist Cell in the real-time series 24 heures chrono. His character, named Jack Bauer, is sometimes disturbing and unsympathetic, constantly having to thwart terrorist plots aimed at harming the security of the United States but also that of the entire world. The actor will hold this role for 8 full seasons. His performance earned him apublic and critical recognition, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Actor. This allowed him to continue in the cinema with a small appearance in Taking Lives, Destins Violés (2004) alongside Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke and then with a role as an investigator attached to the American secret services in another muscular thriller, The Sentinel (2006). In 2008, he starred under the direction of French director Alexandre Aja in the fantasy film Mirrors. Two years later, after lending his voice again to an animated film (Monsters vs. Aliens), the actor reunited with Joel Schumacher (with whom he collaborated on The Right to Kill? and Phone Game) for the social drama Twelve, in which he took on the role of narrator. In 2011, he starred in Melancholia, an apocalyptic drama directed by the sulphurous Lars von Trier.