R. I. P. Donald Sutherland: Chameleonic actor and anti-war activist who combined charm with menace

Sutherland used his rising profile to become a prominent anti-war activist, which made him a target for the US establishment. In 2022, Kiefer Sutherland told The Independent: “Because of my father’s politics, they felt he was a Social Democrat, a socialist, who believed in nationalised healthcare and large government, and those were not necessarily ‘American values’.”

He didn’t let this unwanted attention deter him from speaking out. In 1971, Sutherland starred in Alan Pakula’s thriller Klute opposite Jane Fonda, a fellow anti-war protester with whom he had a two-year affair as his marriage to Douglas fell apart. In 1972, he co-wrote and co-produced an explosive anti-Vietnam-war documentary titled F.T.A., working with Fonda once again.

Sutherland went on to work with the great Italian directors Bernardo Bertolucci (playing a Fascist in 1900 in 1976) and Federico Fellini (as a made-up Lothario in Casanova, also in 1976), but also found time to play a dope-smoking college professor in John Landis’s college comedy Animal House in 1978. The same year, he starred in Philip Kaufman’s sci-fi horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

In 2015, at the age of 80, he told the BBC while promoting The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 that he was determined to keep working right to the end. “It’s a passionate endeavor,” said Sutherland. “Retirement for actors is spelt ‘DEATH’.”

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