Donald Sutherland, actor from “The Hunger Games”, dies

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Sutherland, the prolific Canadian film and television actor whose long career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88 years old.

Kiefer Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death on Thursday. No further details were immediately available.

“Personally, I think he’s one of the greatest actors in film history,” Kiefer Sutherland said in X. “I was never intimidated by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that.”

The tall, gaunt actor with a smile that could be sweet or devilish was known for such unconventional characters as Hawkeye Piece in Robert Altman’s “MASH,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and a doped teacher in “Animal House.”

Before transitioning into a long career as a respected character actor, Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, anti-establishment cinema of the 1970s.

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down but still eccentric roles in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” .

Most recently, he starred in “The Hunger Games” films, and the HBO limited series “The Undoing.” He never retired and worked regularly until his death. Her memoir, “Made Up, But Still True,” will be published in November.

“I love working. I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told Charlie Rose in 1998. “I love feeling like my hand fits into some other character’s glove. I feel great freedom, time stops for me. “I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

He was born in St. John, New Brunswick. His given name was Donald McNichol Sutherland, he was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher. Growing up in Nova Scotia, he was a host with his own radio station at the age of 14.

“When I was 13 or 14, I really thought that everything I felt was wrong and dangerous, and that God was going to kill me for it,” Sutherland told The New York Times in 1981. “My father always said, ‘Keep Keep your mouth shut, Donnie, and maybe people will think you have character.’”

Sutherland started out as an engineering student at the University of Toronto, but switched to English literature and began acting in school theater productions. While studying in Toronto, he met Lois Hardwick, an aspiring actress. They married in 1959 and divorced seven years later.

After graduating in 1956, Sutherland attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts to study acting. Sutherland began appearing in West End plays and on British television. After moving to Los Angeles, she continued from job to job until a series of war films changed her trajectory.

His first American film was “The Dirty Dozen” in 1967, in which he played Vernon Pinkley, a psychopath posing as an officer. 1970 saw the release of the World War II story “Kelly’s Heroes” and “MASH,” an acclaimed hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

“There are more challenges in character characters,” Sutherland told The Washington Post in 1970. “There is longevity. “A good character actor can show a different side in each film and not bore the audience.”

If Sutherland had had his way, Altman would have been fired from “MASH.” He and co-star Elliott Gould were unhappy with the director’s unorthodox, improvisational style and fought to have him replaced. But the film succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations and Sutherland personally identified with its anti-war message. Openly against the Vietnam War, Sutherland, actress Jane Fonda and others founded Free Theater Associates in 1971. Banned by the Army because of their political views, they performed at venues near military bases in Southeast Asia in 1973.

Sutherland’s career as a leading man peaked in the 1970s, when he starred in films by the best directors of the era, even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who often said he saw himself as serving a director’s vision, worked with Federico Fellini (1976), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976), Claude Chabrol (1978), and John Schlesinger (1975).

One of his best performances was as a detective in Alan Pakula’s 1971 “Klute” (“The Past Condemns Me”). It was during the filming of “Klute” that he met Fonda, with whom he had a three-year relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actress Shirley Douglas. After marrying in 1966, he and Douglas divorced in 1971.

Sutherland had twins with Douglas in 1966: Rachel and Kiefer, named after Warren Kiefer, the writer of Sutherland’s first film, “Castle of the Living Dead.”

In 1974, the actor began living with the actress Francine Racette, with whom he remained forever. They had three children: Roeg, born in 1974 and named after director Nicolas Roeg; Rossif, born in 1978 and named after director Frederick Rossif; and Angus Redford, born in 1979 and named after Robert Redford.

It was Redford who, to the surprise of some, cast Sutherland as the father in his directorial debut, 1980’s “Ordinary People.” Redford’s drama about a beautiful suburban family destroyed by tragedy won four Oscars, including best movie.

Sutherland was ignored by academia for most of his career. He was never nominated, but received an honorary Oscar in 2017. However, he won an Emmy in 1995 for the television movie “Citizen ” and “Ordinary People”), winning two, again for “Citizen

“Ordinary People” also heralded a shift in Sutherland’s career toward more mature and sometimes less unconventional characters.

His debut on the New York stage in 1981, however, was terrible. He played Humbert Humbert in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and the reviews were merciless. The play was canceled after a dozen performances.

A period of decline followed in the ’80s, thanks to flops like the 1981 satire “Gas” and the 1984 comedy “Crackers.”

But Sutherland continued to work steadily. She had a brief but memorable role in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991). He reprized a Redford patriarch in his 1993 film “Six Degrees of Separation.” He played track coach Bill Bowerman in 1998’s “Without Limits.”

Over the past decade, Sutherland has increasingly worked in television, most notably on HBO’s “Path to War,” in which he played President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford. For a career started by “MASH” it was a fitting, if ironic, ending.