Donald Sutherland, Versatile Star of M*A*S*H, Ordinary People and The Hunger Games, Dies at 88
Donald Sutherland, whose performances in such films as
M*A*S*H,
Ordinary People and
The Hunger Games proved he could portray sinister, sympathetic, comedic or tragic with equal aplomb, has died. He was 88.
Sutherland died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, CAA’s Missy Davy told
The Hollywood Reporter.
Remarkably, Sutherland was never even nominated for a competitive Oscar, though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made up for the oversight by giving him an honorary statuette in November 2017 at the Governors Awards.
A prodigious actor who often appeared in three to five films a year, the lanky Canadian-born star displayed great range during his six-decade career. His early characters, like crazed/dazed Pvt. Vernon Pinkley in
The Dirty Dozen (1967), anti-Establishment Army medic Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in
M*A*S*H (1970) and hippie tank commander Oddball in
Kelly’s Heroes (1970), were rascally mavericks.
With his distinctive baritone and crystal blue eyes, Sutherland was also effective in provocative roles, like when he played a private eye who falls for a prostitute (his then real-life romantic partner Jane Fonda) in Alan J. Pakula’s
Klute (1971).
In Nicolas Roeg's horror thriller
Don’t Look Now (1973), he and Julie Christie tantalized audiences in one particular bedroom scene, one of the more torrid sexual sequences in movie history. And for Federico Fellini, he starred in 1976 as Casanova.
Sutherland’s turn as the irreverent, martini-loving Hawkeye in
M*A*S*H opposite Elliott Gould as “Trapper” John McIntyre brought him international stardom at age 35.
Taking a different tack, Sutherland was empathetic as a suburban Chicago lawyer trying to hold his family together in Robert Redford's
Ordinary People (1980) and as a compassionate doctor in Richard Pearce’s
Threshold (1981). But then there he was playing a maniacal pyromaniac in Ron Howard‘s
Backdraft (1991).
Sutherland said he pursued the part of the despotic President Snow in
The Hunger Games (2012) after his agent sent him the script. (He would return for all three sequels.)
The nimble Sutherland also memorably played a man on the run in Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a pot-smoking professor in
Animal House (1978), the French painter Paul Gauguin in
The Wolf at the Door (1986) and a South African schoolteacher who changes his opinion about apartheid in
A Dry White Season (1989).
His celebrated career also included turns in 'The Dirty Dozen,' 'Klute,' 'Don't Look Now,' 'Animal House' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'
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