Donald Sutherland

He met his first wife, Lois Hardwick, while he was at Victoria College, University of Toronto. They got married in 1959 and divorced seven years later, without any children.

After his first divorce he married actress Shirley Douglas in 1966. The marriage lasted four years and he had twin children, Kiefer and Rachel, from his second wife.

In 1972 he married actress Francine Racette with whom he had three sons Rossif, Angus and Roeg. The marriage ended in divorce after a decade.

Donald Sutherland was born on 17 July 1935 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, to Dorothy Isobel (Mc Nichol) and Frederick Mc Lea Sutherland. His mother was a math teacher and father worked in sales, managing a local utilities business.

He comes from a normal middle class family and has Scottish, German and English ancestry. His great grandmother was the third cousin of President Rutherford Hayes and he is also distantly related to Howard Dean, erstwhile Governor of Vermont.

As a child he suffered from rheumatic fever, hepatitis and poliomyelitis due to which one leg is still shorter than the other.

He graduated from Bridgewater High School and went on to study at Victoria College, University of Toronto from where he acquired a double major in engineering and drama. He later gave up engineering and wanted to become a sculptor, but finally settled for a career in acting.

His first role was a minor part in a student production of Edward Albee’s ‘The Male Animal’ during his junior year in college. He was also a member of the ‘UC Follies’ comedy troupe in Toronto, Ontario.

After quitting the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Sutherland spent a year and a half with the Perth Repertory Theatre, Scotland. In the mid 1960’s he began getting small roles in British films and TV shows such as ‘The Saint’ and ‘Court Martial’. He featured alongside Christopher Lee in the horror film ‘Castle of the Living Dead’ in 1964 and appeared in the BBC play ‘Oswald Assassin’ in 1966.

In 1968 he got a break with the super hit war movie, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, in which Sutherland had a small but significant role. He thereafter left London and moved to Hollywood to further his career in the film industry. Here he played the lead role in the comedy ‘MASH’ and war movie ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ that had enormous success at the box office in 1970.

Throughout the 1970’s he found himself playing the lead role in a variety of movies, such as the psychological horror movie ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ and thriller, ‘Eye of the Needle’. His offbeat style, onscreen presence, versatility and range ensured that he was not typecast.

He acted in ‘Klute’ in 1971 which made Jane Fonda a star for her role in the movie about a prostitute whose friend is a mysterious murderer. She won an Oscar for the same movie that was also a major landmark in the career of Sutherland.

‘Ordinary People’ (1980) featured him with Robert Redford as an older father figure who has to deal with his children in an emotional drama. The movie won the Best Picture Award, with two Oscar nominations. However, Sutherland once again was overlooked by the Academy Awards committee.

Sutherland is a versatile actor who has played supporting as well as major roles in a variety of films spanning over six decades. His best known performances are in war movies and thrillers.

Major landmark movies are; ‘The Dirty Dozen’ (1967), MASH (1970), ‘Klute’ (1971), ‘Animal House’ (1978), ‘Ordinary People’ (1980), ‘JFK’ (1991) ’Baffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1992), ‘Citizen X’ (1995), ‘Space Cowboys’ (2000), ‘Path of War’ (2002), ‘The Italian Job’ (2003) and ‘The Eagle’ (2011).