RIP

 Canadian actor Donald Sutherland,  whose career spanned 'Fellini’s Casanova' to 'Hunger Games,' dies at 88

Donald Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long career stretched from “M.A.S.H.” to “Fellini’s Casanova” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88.


Issued on: 20/06/2024 -

CANADIAN  actor Donald Sutherland poses for photographers as he arrives at the opening ceremony of the 11th Lumiere Festival, in Lyon, France, Saturday, October 12, 2019. © Laurent Cipriani, AP

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

“I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film,” Kiefer Sutherland said on X. “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.”

The tall and gaunt Canadian actor with a grin that could be sweet or diabolical was known for offbeat characters like Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H.,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the stoned professor in “Animal House.”

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

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down — but still eccentric — parts in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” More, recently, he starred in the “Hunger Games” films. He never retired, working regularly up until his death. A memoir, “Made Up, But Still True,” was due out in November.

“I love to work. I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told Charlie Rose in 1998. “I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other character. I feel a huge freedom — time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

Born in St. John, New Brunswick, Donald McNichol Sutherland was the son of a salesman and a mathematics teacher. Raised in Nova Scotia, he was a disc jockey with his own radio station at the age of 14.

“When I was 13 or 14, I really thought 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 your mouth shut, Donnie, and maybe people will think you have character.’”

Sutherland began as an engineering student at the University of Toronto but switched to English and started acting in school theatrical productions. While studying in Toronto, he met Lois Hardwick, an aspiring actress. They married in 1959, but 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 British television. After a move to Los Angeles, he continued to bounce around until a series of war films changed his trajectory.

His first American film was “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played Vernon Pinkley, the officer-impersonating psychopathic. 1970 saw the release of both the World War II yarn “Kelly’s Heroes” and “M.A.S.H.,” an acclaimed smash hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

“There is more challenge in character roles,” Sutherland told The Washington Post in 1970. “There’s longevity. A good character actor can show a different face in every film and not bore the public.”

If Sutherland had had his way, Altman would have been fired from “M.A.S.H.” He and co-star Elliott Gould were unhappy with the director’s unorthodox, improvisational style and fought to have him replaced. But the film caught on beyond anyone’s expectations and Sutherland identified personally with its anti-war message. Outspoken against the Vietnam War, Sutherland, actress Jane Fonda and others founded the Free Theater Associates in 1971. Banned by the Army because of their political views, they performed in 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 era’s top directors — even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who frequently said he considered himself at the service of a director’s vision, worked with Federico Fellini (1976’s “Fellini’s Casanova”), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976’s “1900”), Claude Chabrol (1978’s “Blood Relatives”) and John Schlesinger (1975’s “The Day of the Locust”).

One of his finest performances came as a detective in Alan Pakula’s “Klute” (1971). It was during filming on “Klute” that he met Fonda, with whom he had a three-year-long relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actor Shirley Douglas. Having been married in 1966, he and Douglas divorced in 1971.

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

In 1974, the actor began living with actress Francine Racette, with whom he remained ever after. They had three children: Roeg, born in 1974 and named after the director Nicolas Roeg (“Don’t Look Now”); Rossif, born in 1978 and named after the 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 handsome suburban family destroyed by tragedy won four Oscars, including best picture.

Sutherland was overlooked by the academy throughout most of his career. He was never nominated but was presented with an honorary Oscar in 2017. He did, though, win an Emmy in 1995 for the TV film “Citizen X” and was nominated for seven Golden Globes (including for his performances in “M.A.S.H.” and “Ordinary People”), winning two — again for “Citizen X” and for the 2003 TV film “Path to War.”

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


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His New York stage debut in 1981, though, went terribly. He played Humbert Humbert in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and the reviews were merciless; it closed after a dozen performances.

A down period in the ‘80s followed, thanks to failures like the 1981 satire “Gas” and the 1984 comedy “Crackers.”

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

In the last decade, Sutherland increasingly worked in television, most memorably in HBO’s “Path to War,” in which he played President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. For a career launched by “M.A.S.H.” it was a fitting, if ironic bookend.

(AP)

HIS GREASTEST ROLE

 

Donald Sutherland hailed as 'one of most important actors' in movie history following death aged 88

By Dale Miller
Published 20th Jun 2024


Donald Sutherland had starred in numerous blockbuster films and TV programmes, including Ordinary People, M*A*S*H, The Hunger Games film series and Six Degrees Of Separation

Kiefer Sutherland has called his father Donald Sutherland “one of the most important actors in the history of film” following the Canadian actor’s death aged 88.

The star of Ordinary People, M*A*S*H, The Hunger Games film series and Six Degrees Of Separation died on Thursday in Miami, Florida, following a “long illness”, his agent CAA said.

In a tribute, the 24 TV show star Kiefer wrote on Instagram: “With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away.

Donald Sutherland attending the UK Premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 at the Odeon Leicester Square, London. Picture: Daniel Leal/PA Wire

“I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”

Sutherland won a Golden Globe for the TV movie Path To War for playing presidential adviser Clark Clifford and another gong along with an Emmy Award for the the mini-series Citizen X.

In 2017, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his acting but failed to get an Oscar nod during his lengthy career.

Sutherland’s most recent roles included The Hunger Games film franchise as dictator president Coriolanus Snow, and as a judge in the 2023 TV show Lawmen: Bass Reeves.

He also had roles in thriller The Mechanic, Roman epic The Eagle, war film The Dirty Dozen, satire The Day Of The Locust, horror Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, period drama Pride & Prejudice and drama Space Cowboys.

Sutherland is perhaps best known as the womanising Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce Jr in the 1970 film version of M*A*S*H, and would eventually becoming a leading campaigner against war.

In 2012, he became a Commander of the Arts in France and was praised by the French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand for his “extraordinary” career.

Sutherland was about to publish his memoir Made Up, But Still True, later this year, which was set to explore “an unfiltered account of his memories of his life” from how life-changing a role M*A*S*H had been along with “his far too many brushes with death”.

The actor had infantile paralysis and rheumatic fever before almost dying from spinal meningitis as a child, and later left Canada for the UK to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda).

Sutherland’s early roles in the 1960s included European and UK productions such as Castle Of The Living Dead, which starred Christopher Lee, and Fanatic with Tallulah Bankhead, before he was cast in The Dirty Dozen as one of the American convicts sent on a secret mission as part of the D-Day landings in the Second World War.

A statement from CAA said: “Acclaimed actor Donald Sutherland died today in Miami, Florida after a long illness. He was 88 years old.”

It also said: “Sutherland is survived by his wife Francine Racette, sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer, daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren.

“A private celebration of life will be held by the family.”

Sutherland’s son Roeg is an executive at the talent agency CAA, and his sons Rossif and Angus have also worked as actors.

PM Justin Trudeau remembers ‘truly great Canadian artist’ Donald Sutherland

Among those paying tribute was British actress Dame Helen Mirren.

SUTHERLAND WAS DESCRIBED AS ‘TRULY A GREAT CANADIAN ARTIST’ BY JUSTIN TRUDEAU (ALVARO VELAZQUEZ GARDETA/ALAMY)

ELLIE IORIZZO

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has remembered actor-turned-activist Donald Sutherland as “truly a great Canadian artist” following his death aged 88.

Mr Trudeau first learned of Hollywood star Sutherland’s death while hosting a news conference in Westville, Canada, related to the national school food programme.

“I didn’t know, thank you for telling me,” he told the journalist.

“I had the opportunity when I was much younger to meet Donald Sutherland and even as a young man who hadn’t had a full exposure to the depth of brilliance of Donald Sutherland, I was deeply, deeply starstruck.

“He was a man with a strong presence, a brilliance in his craft, and truly a great Canadian artist and he will be deeply missed.

“My thoughts go out to Kiefer and the entire Sutherland family, as well as all Canadians who are no doubt saddened to learn as I am right now.”

During his esteemed career, Sutherland garnered hundreds of film and TV credits alongside star-studded casts.

Among those paying tribute was British actress Dame Helen Mirren, who appeared alongside Sutherland in 2017’s The Leisure Seeker, following their 1990 drama Bethune: The Making Of A Hero.

“Donald Sutherland was one of the smartest actors I ever worked with,” Dame Helen said in a statement given to the PA news agency.

“He had a wonderful enquiring brain, and a great knowledge on a wide variety of subjects.

“He combined this great intelligence with a deep sensitivity, and with a seriousness about his profession as an actor.

READ MORE

Donald Sutherland: An enduring legacy of playing both heroes and villains

Legendary MASH and Hunger Games actor Donald Sutherland dies at 88

“This all made him into the legend of film that he became. He was my colleague and became my friend. I will miss his presence in this world.”

Meanwhile two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas, who starred in 1994 film Disclosure alongside Sutherland and Demi Moore, shared a picture of the pair together on Instagram.

“What a lovely, talented, and curious man. RIP Donald Sutherland,” he wrote.

US star Rob Lowe, who lead the cast of Salem’s Lot in 2004, based on Stephen King’s novel, opposite Sutherland, said “today we lost one of our greatest actors” in a post on X.

“It was my honour to work with him many years ago, and I will never forget his charisma and ability.

“If you want a master class in acting, watch him in Ordinary People”, Lowe said.

Sutherland starred in drama Ordinary People in 1980, which later won four Oscars, including best picture, supporting actor for Timothy Hutton while Robert Redford won the gong for best director.

It came a decade before Sutherland starred in US thriller Backdraft, opposite Robert De Niro, Kurt Russell and William Baldwin.

“One of the most intelligent, interesting and engrossing film actors of all time,” Backdraft director Ron Howard said on X.

“Incredible range, creative courage and dedication to serving the story and the audience with supreme excellence.”

OPINION

The monsters we create: Republicans and their battle against the zombie apocalypse

D. Stephen Voss, Kentucky Lantern

February 16, 2024

You can tell a lot about a people from the monsters they use to frighten themselves.

During the height of the Red Scare, Americans feared a communist conspiracy taking over the world — converting their friends and neighbors, staffing U.S. institutions with secret enemies. So their entertainment was filled with extraterrestrials who could mimic humans.

Notably, some of those monsters — such as the “body snatchers” and “The Thing” — reappeared just as the Cold War between Communist Russia and Reagan’s America was about to heat back up.

The late 1980s brought new threats: the scourge of drugs, the AIDS epidemic, contaminated needles. Who better to scare and entice Generation X than vampires – a monster that symbolizes corruption of the blood and stands for appetites that, once fed, might prove irresistible? The vampire genre rose from its coffin.

Trying to identify a monster who embodies the Trump Era gets tricky, because so many things frighten Republicans today.

I don’t solely mean that GOP politicians whip up fears, because Democrats do that, too.

I mean: You should take pity on any conservatives in your life, because they occupy a world much scarier than where everyone else lives.

People who see the world as a hostile place are more likely to lean rightward. Show a video with something lethal, like a snake or spider, and conservatives focus more on the threat. Make a loud noise; they’re more likely to react. Show a yucky photo and their gag reflex kicks in faster.

With so many fears and aversions to encapsulate, it might be tempting to give up on identifying one creature that haunts Republican nightmares – instead settling on a show like “Supernatural,” which sent brothers Sam and Dean careening across the flyover states to battle a rapid rotation of beasts.

But no, one monster did enjoy special cultural resonance leading up to Trump’s presidency: Zombies!!!

It began with a handful of surprisingly popular zombie movies during the Bush years. The Resident Evil franchise — which combined infected former humans with a sinister deep-state conspiracy — also kicked off then, reaching its “Final Chapter” immediately after Trump’s inauguration.

Most obviously, “The Walking Dead” first aired in 2010 and achieved the height of its popularity before Trump’s election.

Created by two Kentuckians and overwhelmingly popular in culturally conservative areas — most notably Appalachia — that show’s central characters were a lawman, a redneck hunter, and a former housewife. Threats included a former high-school staffer, a collectivist artist and, amusingly, a Center for Disease Control scientist.

Zombie entertainment, the non-comedic sort, portrays a constantly threatening setting that demands toughness and favors strongmen. It’s a Trumpian fantasy.

View today’s GOP as though it’s fending off a zombie apocalypse, and disparate policy initiatives suddenly fit together. It’s only partly a tongue-in-cheek observation to note that conservatives see zombies all around them.

A zombie horde shambles toward the southern border, carrying foreign diseases (like drugs and terrorism) with them. Let’s build a wall and send troops!

City-dwelling zombies clamber on top of each other, colors blended until they’re a uniform gray, making metro areas dangerous as they satisfy soulless hungers. Let’s dispatch more cops and militarize them! Let’s make it easier for property owners to run them off and root out their hives!

Big institutions to which citizens are vulnerable — government, corporations — are staffed by inflexible and heartless zombies, bound by rules that ensure nothing gets better. “You can’t even get a human on the phone.” Let’s elect an unpresidential president who ignores the rules and shakes everything up!

Conservatives teach their children, including their daughters, traditional values. But when they’re sent off to school, teachers infect them with a progressive virus that makes them part of the zombie hive. They lose their faith, their self-control, their gender, their identity — returning home uncommunicative (if not hostile), hypnotized by flashing smartphones as they sullenly shovel food into their mouths.

So let’s help keep kids out of public schools! Let’s limit funds for education, try to control teachers and librarians! Let’s ban TikTok and confiscate student phones! Let’s politicize school-board elections and encourage school prayer!

Zombies want nothing except to eat. So maybe that explains the conservative inclination to starve programs that feed people, not just food stamps but also free school lunches and even a program intended to improve nutrition for pregnant Women and Infant Children.

And conservatives envision streams of zombies who know little about government — they vote for Democrats, after all — mindlessly casting ballots (or passively allowing their ballots to be “harvested”) on behalf of the wicked conspirators who set this apocalypse off in the first place.

So their impulse is to make voting harder. Aren’t zombies less likely to surmount small barriers? And in places where Democrats dominate, let’s make elections nonpartisan so it’s harder to cast a brainless party-line vote.

That’s where Republicans lose the plot.

Until now, my zombie analogy has just been a playful way to represent a sad truth about the culture war. Whether progressive or right wing, ideologues view their positions as obviously correct — and so morally superior that opponents must be mindless, soulless, or both.

But at least the policies conservatives usually pursue to combat “zombies” have some hope of beating back their rivals. They’re not irrational.

The same cannot be said for voting restrictions, such as the attempt to gut what remains of early voting in Kentucky or the ongoing effort to make elections in Louisville nonpartisan.

Interfering in Jefferson County’s election rules is unlikely to help conservatives. As I explained to town leaders in Hopkinsville recently, when they brought me in to summarize research on nonpartisan elections, they rarely prevent party-based voting. Usually, a light hint or two is sufficient for almost everyone to identify the “Democratic” candidate and vote accordingly.

To the extent going nonpartisan keeps voters from following their herd, expecting Democrats to struggle reflects an outdated conception that their side relies on, well, zombies.

Listen to what campaign workers out in the field are saying. They’ve never seen Democratic voters so attentive, so fired up (or so networked by smartphones and social media).

Look at the numerous disappointments Republican politicians have suffered since 2018. Educated voters are switching sides.

Note the consistent Republican underperformance in special elections, most recently New York’s.

It’s grassroots Republican supporters who have become listless, unfocused, and unmotivated. Making it harder to participate, such as by hiding who the GOP’s candidates are, just increases the odds their party is the one like a dead man walking.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions:

info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder, review: a jaw-dropping injection of sheer Saturday night magic

Michael Hogan
Sat, 2 December 2023

Revelling in chemistry: Catherine Tate and David Tennant in Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder - James Pardon/BBC

It began with an historical bang and ended with a heartbreaking posthumous appearance. In between, Doctor Who (BBC One) delivered a blockbusting adventure. Writer Russell T Davies warned that Wild Blue Yonder was “weird”. Leading man David Tennant said it was “shocking… unlike any episode ever”. They weren’t wrong. This was a deeply creepy, dazzlingly creative hour of teatime TV.

A witty prologue saw the Tardis crash-land in an apple tree, circa 1666. A certain physicist happened to be sitting beneath it. The Doctor greeted him as “Sir Isaac Newton” before correcting himself and losing the honorific. The colour-blind casting of Nathaniel Curtis, the half-Indian actor best known for starring in Davies’ It’s A Sin, could rattle a few cages. The Doctor (Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) were far more concerned with the fact that the influential polymath was “hot”. They left him with the made-up word “mavity” as a parting gift. He’ll get there eventually.

The main meat of the story took place on a seemingly empty spaceship at the edge of the universe. Except this is sci-fi, where spaceships are rarely really empty. Lying in wait was “something so bad that the Tardis ran away”: two shape-shifting, war-mongering lifeforms which morphed into doppelgängers of the Doctor and Donna, planning to steal the Tardis and wreak intergalactic havoc. Like Newton said: “Odd bodkins! What the devil?”

As their physical forms settled, they sprouted long arms, slack jaws and vampiric teeth. They ran on all fours, grew to outlandish size, got stuck in corridors and melted into puddles. Unsettling and strange, they referenced horror films from Invasion of The Body Snatchers to Jordan Peele’s Us.

The design team faced a challenge bringing to life what Davies had written on the page. They rose to it. The show’s new distribution deal with Disney brings a boosted budget, which was visible in the fully realised spacecraft and Hollywood-worthy visual effects. These were supplemented by fine physical acting by Tennant and Tate, playing their own doubles in eerie style.

When they finally returned to Earth, they were greeted by Wilfred Mott (the late Bernard Cribbins), now wheelchair-bound but still a doughty warrior. Cribbins filmed scenes last year before his death. The Doctor spoke for us all when he beamed: “Now nothing is wrong. Nothing in the whole wide world. Hello, my old soldier.”

For all the hype-building talk of shocking weirdness, this was Doctor Who boiled down to its essence. The Timelord and his loyal companion, landing somewhere mysterious, finding themselves in trouble. No big cast nor political preaching. Just a rollicking yarn in a confined setting with scary monsters. A back-to-basics “base under siege” adventure with a whopping twist.

Tennant was funny and fizzingly charismatic, revelling in his chemistry with Tate. There was warm bickering, clever wordplay and dark hints of the Doctor being haunted by his origins. Their reunited double act feels nostalgic yet thrillingly new – perfect for marking the show’s 60th anniversary, before launching its new era.

We now await next Saturday’s climactic special The Giggle, which marks the return of classic villain The Toymaker (now played by Neil Patrick Harris) – and presumably ends with Tennant’s regeneration into the 15th Doctor (long-term replacement Ncuti Gatwa). In just two episodes, Davies has restored our faith in family-friendly sci-fi. This was a jaw-dropping, joyous injection of sheer Saturday night magic.

Doctor Who says Sir Isaac Newton 'was so hot' in hint at his sexuality

Liz Perkins
Sat, 2 December 2023 

David Tennant, back in the Tardis, has made a hint about the doctor's sexuality

He has travelled across time and space but in his latest adventure, the Doctor has revealed a previously unseen dimension to his character in saying he finds Sir Isaac Newton “hot.”

David Tennant, who has stepped back into the Tardis to be the 14th doctor for three Doctor Who anniversary specials, made the hint about his sexuality in a remark to Catherine Tate, who returns as his assistant Donna Noble.

They have been asked to make a comeback to mark the 60th anniversary of the hit show, after originally starring together in 2005, which David previously described as an “unexpected treat.”

Sir Isaac Newton was ‘hot’

In the exchange seen by viewers on Saturday night, Donna said: “Is it just me or was Isaac Newton hot?”

And the Doctor replied: “He was, wasn’t he? He was so hot. Oh! Is that who I am now?”

Donna added: “Well, it was never too far from the surface, mate. I always thought you...”

Award-winning Russell T Davies, who was the creator and the sole writer of Queer as Folk, has returned as the showrunner to mark the special anniversary.

He is credited with turning the series into a worldwide hit after returning in 2005.
Show moving into new areas

Ahead of the show being screened, he said: “It’s set far away from Earth. It’s a bit weird, it’s scary, it’s freaky, it pushes the show into areas it’s never quite been into before.”

The programme in the official synopsis is described as “The Tardis takes the Doctor and Donna to the furthest edge of adventure. To escape, they must face the most desperate fight of their lives, with the fate of the universe at stake.”

The Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder show saw the Tardis crash-land in an apple tree, circa 1666, and on his return to Earth, the Doctor was greeted by Bernard Cribbins, who played Donna’s grandfather, Wilf.

David Tennant previously revealed Cribbins was making his final appearance in the poignant episode. The actor died in July last year.

BBC Studios are partnering with Bad Wolf to produce the series.