Canadian actor Donald Sutherland died Thursday at the age of 88 in Miami (Florida) following a long illness, his agency CAA announced. He was known for his roles in The Bastard Twelve, MASH, JFK and more recently in the hit series The Hunger Games.
“It is with a heavy heart that I announce that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” his son Kiefer Sutherland wrote in a post on Instagram Thursday. “I personally think he is one of the most important actors in the history of cinema. Never intimidated by a role, whether good, bad or ugly,” he wrote. “My father loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that. A life well lived,” he said.
A huge actor in Hollywood
Tall in stature and known for his intensity on screen, Kiefer Sutherland starred in more than 140 films throughout a career spanning more than 50 years. In 2020, he won an Emmy Award for his role as a Soviet official in the HBO film “Citizen X” and starred in the series Trust And The Undoing on HBO. In 2019, during an interview given to Reuters, he was happy to give some advice to future actors. “Try to be as real as possible, read, read a lot, learn, memorize things, enjoy your art, study dance, be a circus performer, learn to juggle, so many things, but most of all you have to observe” , he explained.
Donald Sutherland rose to prominence when he was cast as one of the Twelve bastards in the highly successful 1967 film. He then starred in another war film, Kelly’s Heroesbefore playing the doctor Hawkeye Pierce in MASHHe also starred with Jane Fonda in the Oscar-winning crime film Klute. He will also have shared the screen three times with his son Kiefer Sutherland, whom many French people know for his role in the series “24 Heures chrono”.
A Canadian citizen at heart
Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, he attended the University of Toronto, where he studied engineering before turning to drama and performing on stage, earning a degree in two areas. Donald Sutherland notably received an honorary award from the board of directors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017. But above all, he has been decorated numerous times by Canada, including the Order of Canada. In October 2023, the Canadian Post even released a postal stamp paying tribute to him.