Actors - Donald Sutherland

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	Actors - Donald Sutherland

Donald McNicol Sutherland, OC (born July 17, 1935) is a prolific Canadian actor with a film career spanning over 40 years.

Early life

Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and grew up in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, the grandson of a Protestant minister. Sutherland got his first part time job aged 14 as a news correspondent for his local radio station CKBW Radio in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He then studied at Victoria College, University of Toronto (where he was expelled from residence for throwing a sink out of a window) eventually graduating with a double major in engineering and drama. He had at one point been a member of "UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto. He changed his mind about becoming an engineer and subsequently left Canada for England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Acting career

In the early 1960s he began to get small parts in British film and TV, in the mid 1960s getting notable roles in horror films with Christopher Lee such as Castle of the Living Dead (1964), and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
(1965). His first great successes came with the three war films The Dirty Dozen
in 1967 with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, in 1970 as the lead Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and as tank commander Sgt. Oddball in Kelly's Heroes
with Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas. Sutherland formed an intimate friendship with the actress Jane Fonda during the filming of the Academy award winning detective thriller Klute
(1971), Sutherland later remarked that they had had a physical relationship on and off screen (to critic Mark Cousins in 2001). Sutherland and Fonda went on to co-produce and star together in the anti Vietnam war film F.T.A. (1972) consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviews with the American troops who were then on active service. Sutherland found himself in demand as a leading man throughout the 1970s in films such as the Venice based psychological horror Don't Look Now
(1973), the war film The Eagle Has Landed
(1976), and as the ever optimistic health inspector in the sci-fi horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1978) alongside Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum. He also made acclaimed performances in the 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci Italian fascism epic (318 minute) 1900
and for his role as the torn father in the Academy award winning family drama Ordinary People
(1980) alongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. He played the part of fellow countryman, Canadian Norman Bethune, a physician, humanitarian and hero in China with whom he identified, in two separate biographical films in 1977 and 1990. Through the 1980s and 1990s his films were perhaps less noteworthy than those in the 70s, exceptions being the South African apartheid drama A Dry White Season
(1989) alongside Marlon Brando and Susan Sarandon, the fire fighter thriller Backdraft
(1991) alongside Kurt Russell and De Niro, and as the snobbish NYC art dealer in Six Degrees of Separation
(1993) with Stockard Channing and Will Smith. In the Oliver Stone film JFK, Sutherland played a mysterious Washington intelligence officer who spoke of links to the military-industrial complex in relation to Kennedy's assassination. Recently he has been noted for his role as the Reverend Monroe in the civil war drama Cold Mountain
(2003), in the re-make of The Italian Job
(2003), and in Pride and Prejudice (2005) starring alongside Keira Knightley.

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Actors - Donald Sutherland

Early life

Acting career

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