Donald Sutherland
1935-2024
Actor Donald Sutherland died earlier this week, a few weeks short of his 89th birthday. At that age, one can say that Sutherland had a long and terrific run as an actor. He has been around for so long and has such a wonderful body of work, that you just assume that he would always be around, popping up in this movie or that streaming mini-series and giving his usual great performance.
The first of his one hundred ninety-nine (199!!!) acting credits in IMDB came in 1962 when he played "Switchboard Operator" in an episode of something called Studio 4. There followed dozens of appearances on television and small movies, many in his native Canada, before his big break in Hollywood came in "The Dirty Dozen" in 1967. From then on, his career took off and he never really went away from our movie theater and television screens.
Here is just a partial list of some of the great films in which Donald Sutherland appeared, oft times in a leading role, sometimes in a supporting character role.
The Dirty Dozen 1967
M*A*S*H 1970
Klute 1971
Don't Look Now 1973
The Eagle Has Landed 1976
Animal House 1978
The Great Train Robbery 1978
Ordinary People 1980
The Eye of the Needle 1981
JFK 1991
Pride & Predjudice 2005
The Undoing 2020
And these are just movies that I have seen and liked. Others could probably make equally long lists of Sutherland's credits and not include any of the above.
I can remember watching "The Undoing" back in 2020. It was a six part mini-series that starred Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. It was a thriller/murder mystery and was quite good. We wanted to watch it because of Kidman and Grant. Donald Sutherland had a sporting role. He might have played Kidman's father, but I can't actually remember at this point four years down the road. What did strike me at the time was that this was the first time I had seen Sutherland in anything for quite a while, and he held your attention from the get go as soon as he appeared on screen. He was easily the best part of show, and I was amazed when I looked it up and saw that the was 85 years old at the time.
And since I have not been a watcher of "The Hunger Games" I was unaware that he created an entire new fan base for himself by playing The President on all of these films that were made from 2012 through 2015. Like I said, he has never gone away. His last IMDB acting credit was eight episodes in the series "Lawman Bass Reeves" in 2023. Incredibly, he was never nominated for an Oscar, but the Motion Academy righted that particular wrong by awarding him an honorary Oscar in 2018 in recognition of his extraordinary body of work.
In addition to his legacy on film, Donald Sutherland leaves behind and acting legacy in his son, Kiefer Sutherland, who is in the process of fashioning a pretty good body of work himself.
RIP Donald Sutherland
Just a few scenes from a memorable career....
"M*A*S*H"
The original Hawkeye Pierce
"Klute"
with Jane Fonda
"Animal House"
The put-upon college professor
"Ordinary People"
with Timothy Hutton
"The Undoing"
with Nicole Kidman
Donald and Kiefer Sutherland
Father and Son
POST SCRIPT:
Over the course of the last 27 days, beginning on May 27, I have posted four Absent Friends posts about four people of whom it can be said they were true giants in their fields, Bill Walton, Jerry West, Willie Mays, and now Donald Sutherland. It is almost overwhelming, and one could say that it is depressing. I prefer to look at it in the same way that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar put it in his recent tribute to Willie Mays:
"I’m at a point in my life where I want to spend less time mourning the deaths of my friends and heroes and more time celebrating their lives."
So, let us celebrate these folks. Start by watching a Donald Sutherland movie this week. As you can see from the above, there are many. many from which to choose.
No comments:
Post a Comment