Donald Sutherland

Sutherland rose to fame after starring in films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), and Kelly's Heroes (1970). He subsequently starred in many films both in leading and supporting roles, including Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Day of the Locust (1975), Fellini's Casanova (1976), 1900 (1976), Animal House (1978), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Ordinary People (1980), Eye of the Needle (1981), A Dry White Season (1989), Backdraft (1991), JFK (1991), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Without Limits (1998), The Italian Job (2003), and Pride & Prejudice (2005). More recently, Sutherland portrayed President Snow in The Hunger Games franchise.


Sutherland has also received accolades for his television roles. For his portrayal of Colonel Mikhail Fetisov in Citizen X (1995) he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He played Adam Czerniaków in Uprising (2001), and Clark Clifford in Path to War (2002) earning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.


Sutherland has received various honours including inductions into the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2000 and Hollywood Walk of Fame 2011. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) in 1978, a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012 and received the Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) in 2019. He is the father of actors Kiefer Sutherland, Rossif Sutherland, and Angus Sutherland. In October 2023, Canada Post issued a stamp in his honour, commemorating his career as one of Canada's most respected and versatile actors.^[7]

Early life and education[edit]

Sutherland was born 17 July 1935 at the Saint John General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick,^[8] the son of Dorothy Isobel (née McNichol; 1892–1956) and Frederick McLea Sutherland (1894–1983), who worked in sales and ran the local gas, electricity and bus company.^[2][9] He is of Scottish, German and English ancestry.^[10] As a child, he had rheumatic fever, hepatitis, and poliomyelitis.^[11] Sutherland and his family lived in a farmhouse in Lakeside, New Brunswick, before moving to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia at the age of 12,^[8] where he spent his teenage years.^[11] He obtained his first part-time job, at the age of 14, as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW.


Sutherland graduated from Bridgewater High School. He then studied at Victoria University, an affiliated college of the University of Toronto, where he met his first wife Lois May Hardwick (not to be confused with the child star Lois Ann Hardwick), and graduated with a double major in engineering and drama. He had at one point been a member of the "UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto. He changed his mind about becoming an engineer, and left Canada for Britain in 1957,^[12] studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.