Donald Sutherland Dies: Revered Actor In ‘Klute’, ‘Ordinary People’, ‘Hunger Games’ & Scores Of Others Was 88

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Donald Sutherland, the beloved actor who starred in scores of films from The Dirty Dozen, MASH and Klute to Animal House and Ordinary People to Pride & Prejudice and The Hunger Games franchise and won an Emmy for Citizen X, died Thursday in Miami after a long illness. He was 88.

The 2017 Honorary Oscar recipient also is the father of Emmy-winning 24 and Designated Survivor actor Kiefer Sutherland and veteran CAA Media Finance exec Roeg Sutherland. CAA confirmed the news to Deadline.

In some of his most well-known roles, he perfected a laconic, wry and dead-serious delivery as such characters as the cool-headed amateur murder investigator John Klute, opposite Jane Fonda’s terrified, erratic call girl Bree Daniels, in Klute; as the Hawkeye Pierce in the film MASH, where he played opposite Elliott Gould’s cut-up Trapper John; and in Nicolas Reog’s Don’t Look Now as skeptical John Baxter, who does not believe the claims of wife Laura (Julie Christie) that their recently dead daughter is reaching out from the other side.

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In one early change-of-pace characterization, Sutherland played a sadistic fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1976 epic 1900, in which his character gleefully swings a child by the heels, bashing the boy’s head against a wall.

Born on July 17, 1935, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, Donald Sutherland amassed some 200 film and TV credits spanning more than 60 years, from guesting on episodes of 1960s series including Suspense, The Avengers, Court Martial and The Odd Man to last year’s Paramount+ drama Bass Reeves. His big break in movies came with Robert Aldrich’s star-packed 1967 World War II drama The Dirty Dozen, playing Vernon Pinkley opposite Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas and others. A hit in theaters, it remains a seminal American war movie.

His next big role was as Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in Robert Altman’s 1970 Korean War dramedy MASH. The alternatively harrowing and hilarious film earned five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, winning for Ring Lardner Jr.’s biting screenplay, and fueled the 1972-83 CBS series in which Alda Alda played Hawkeye.

Sutherland followed that with another star-laden war movie, 1970’s Kelly’s Heroes, playing Sgt. Oddball alongside Clint Eastwood, Don Rickles, Savalas and others. That led to perhaps his biggest star turn, in the 1971 Alan J. Pakula crime drama Klute. He starred opposite Fonda as New York Detective John Klute, who is hired to find a chemical company executive who has disappeared. Fonda won her first Oscar for the role, and Andy Lewis & Dave Lewis were nominated for their Original Screenplay.

Sutherland’s next big movie was Nicolas Roeg’s psychological thriller Don’t Look Now, which he followed up with the 1974 international espionage comedy S*P*Y*S, reteaming with Gould, and 1975’s Hollywood-set Day of the Locust. Starring with William Atherton, Karen Black and Burgess Meredith, he played accountant Homer Simpson, who covets Black’s aspiring actress Faye Greener.

With his film career in high gear, Sutherland starred in yet another big-name war movie in The Eagle Has Landed (1976), with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, and then had a small role in the 1977 John Landis-directed farce The Kentucky Fried Movie, penned by future Airplane! filmmakers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker.

1978 would see Sutherland headline three disparate films: heist comedy The Great Train Robbery with Seaon Connery and Lesley-Anne Down; horror thriller remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum; and the beloved early-’60s fraternity romp Animal House, also directed by Landis

He had a supporting but key role in the latter, playing Faber College English lit Professor Dave Jennings. His deadpan character bores his classes with lectures on John Milton in one scene and is sleeping with student Katy (Karen Allen) in the next. She was the girlfriend of Boon (Peter Riegert), one of the Delta Chi fraternity members. The cast also included John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Stephen Furst, Bruce McGill, KEvin Bacon, Amadeus Oscar winner Tom Hulce and John Vernon.

After starring with Three’s Company‘s Suzanne Somers in the 1980 comedy Nothing Personal, Sutherland’s next film was among his biggest. He starred as Calvin Jarrett, a man grieving for one son and dealing with the suicide attempt of another in Ordinary People, director Robert Redford’s generational drama that won four Oscars including Best Picture. The film’s starry cast also included Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch, Elizabeth McGovern and others.

Sutherland continued to make films throughout the 1980s and had a key role in Ron Howard’s 1991 firefighter drama Backdraft, playing an imprisoned pyromaniac who helps investigators by saying the arsonist they are hunting must be a firefighter also.

In the 1990s, Sutherland appeared in films including JFK, playing a composite character called Mr. X; Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Merrick, who convinces Kristy Swanson’s titular character that she is the Chosen One and helps her along the way; and Six Degrees of Separation, starring with Will Smith, Stockard Channing and Ian McKellen.

The actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing Russian Col. Mikhail Fetisov in HBO’s 1995 serial-killer thriller telepic Citizen X, starring with Stephen Rea and Max von Sydow, and had a supporting role that same year in Wolfgang Peterson’s spreading-virus film Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman.

Sutherland also won a Golden Globe for the TV movie Path to War. His extensive television credits also include The Undoing, Trust, Dirty Sexy Money, and The Pillars of the Earth, among many others.

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.

Mike Fleming Jr. and Greg Evans contributed to this report.

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