Donald Sutherland, the beloved Canadian actor who gifted the world with inspired performances in titles like M*A*S*H, Don’t Look Now, Klute, Ordinary People, and The Hunger Games, passed away on Thursday, June 20.
The news was broken by his son and fellow actor Kiefer Sutherland on his X account. “With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” the statement said. The 57-year-old called his dad “one of the most important actors in the history of film,” and complimented the fearlessness with which he approached his profession. “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.”
Kiefer says his dad’s was a “life well lived.” The Emmy and Golden Globe winner was 88.
How did Donald Sutherland die?
Multiple sources report that Donald Sutherland died from a long illness, although it is unclear what that illness was.
The veteran actor was born July 17, 1935, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. His career started in English and Scottish theaters before he moved on to film and television in the 60s. To the newer generations, he’s perhaps best known for playing President Snow in the Hunger Games series, a role he was incredibly passionate about. Sutherland, who was a vocal anti-war activist, repeatedly spoke about the movie’s potential to politically inform and mobilize young people.
In 1968, Sutherland contracted bacterial meningitis from the Danube River in Yugoslavia while shooting Kelly’s Heroes, slipped into a coma, and nearly died. “I died for four or five seconds,” he told the L.A. Times in 1989. In childhood, he also battled infantile paralysis, polio, and rheumatic fever.
In 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award. At the time of his death, the prolific character actor, whose career included over 200 credits, was working on his first and only memoir Made Up, But Still True, which was and probably still is slated to be released by Viking Canada in November of this year.
Donald Sutherland is survived by his wife Francine Racette, sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer, daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren.