As if he were always in his role, before and after: Donald Sutherland as a jury member at the Berlinale 2019
Photo: dpa
Acting is just a profession like any other. In the end the money has to come in – no matter how! Michael Caine, son of a cleaning lady and a fish market porter, can tell you a lot about it. He appeared in 160 films; many of them are B and C goods. But Caine stands by it. It’s better to get rich with trash than to die in poverty like his father!
Donald Sutherland was never particularly picky when it came to roles. But what would you expect from an actor whose early work included a cheap horror flick called “The Castle of the Living Dead,” in which he had to take on three parts for cost reasons!
Born and raised in the Canadian province on the east coast in New Brunswick, the only bilingual state, he went to drama school in London in the 1960s. The breakthrough came in 1967 with the US war film “The Dirty Dozen” by Robert Aldrich. Admittedly a classic, but not the kind that wins you an Oscar for acting. But at least Sutherland was in business with it. Around 190 cinema and television productions were to follow. In 2023, at the age of 87, he appeared in “Miranda’s Victim” and “Heart Land” – both supporting roles.
Often it was smaller parts that he took on. So he stayed in the conversation. People tend to forget that unemployment in Hollywood is not an individual fate. Even stars are not immune to suddenly finding themselves on the street, as the example of Meg Ryan shows. From the late ’80s to the late ’90s, she played what felt like the same lead role in over a dozen films. But when the audience had had enough of this image of women, she was “burnt” as an actor.
This danger never existed with Donald Sutherland. He didn’t represent any type. He was neither a bright man like Robert Redford nor a psychopath like Christopher Walken. And although he took on a wide variety of roles, he did not practice method acting. He was no Dustin Hoffman, who plays a down-and-out crook (“Asphalt Cowboy”) today, a supposed woman (“Tootsie”) tomorrow and an autistic person the day after (“Rain Man”) and disappears behind each of these characters.
The opposite was the case. Donald Sutherland’s strength was that he was always recognizable as Donald Sutherland. That may explain why he was never nominated for an Oscar. Not even when he appeared in highly award-winning films such as “A Completely Normal Family” (1980, directed by Robert Redford). Because, like Steve McQueen, he didn’t act, but embodied an aura. It was about atmosphere, not about facial contortions. Therefore, he could afford to underact rather than overact – even when he had the lead role, as in “Klute” and “When the Gondolas Wear Mourning.” Sutherland’s screen presence was so massive that he even enhanced ready-to-wear items such as Backdraft.
This was of course due to his height (1.93 meters), but even more so to his ice-blue eyes, which radiated something unfathomable and sometimes uncanny. He didn’t necessarily have to play the villain like he did in “The Hunger Games.” His sheer presence was enough to signal to the viewer that something was wrong with this world.
Even if she is supposedly healthy. “A completely normal family” falls apart because one of the two sons dies in an accident. Once again, it’s Sutherland’s stone face that makes it clear: It’s better not to expect a happy ending. He even plays Jesus Christ in Dalton Trumbo’s famous anti-war film “Johnny Goes to War.” And for Fellini a sad Casanova.
And where the worst is to be expected anyway, you can also take refuge in gallows humor – the world ends funny. Which is why Donald Sutherland was the ideal cast for anarchic comedies like “MASH” or “I think a horse will kick me” (original title: “Animal House”). Suddenly the tension that he displays in so many films is released. The mask breaks and a wildness bursts out that gives an idea of how much effort it must have cost him to repeatedly portray the self-controlled, withdrawn skeptic. In 2018 he received the honorary Oscar for his life’s work.
Donald Sutherland died on June 20th in Miami, Florida at the age of 88.
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