BY JAKE COYLE
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald
Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long
career stretched from “M.A.S.H.” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was
88.
Kiefer
Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death
Thursday. No further details were immediately available.
“I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of
film,” Kiefer Sutherland said on X. “Never daunted by a role, good, bad
or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never
ask for more than that.”
The tall and gaunt Canadian actor with a grin that could be sweet or
diabolical was known for offbeat characters like Hawkeye Pierce in
Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H.,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s
Heroes” and the stoned professor in “Animal House.”
Before transitioning into a long career as a respected character actor,
Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, antiestablishment cinema of the
1970s .
Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down —
but still eccentric — parts in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and
Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”
More, recently, he starred in the “Hunger Games” films and the HBO
limited series “The Undoing.” He never retired and worked regularly up
until his death.
“I love to work. I passionately love to work,” Sutherland told Charlie
Rose in 1998. “I love to feel my hand fit into the glove of some other
character. I feel a huge freedom — time stops for me. I’m not as crazy
as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”
He received an honorary Oscar in 2017.
