Hollywood never knew quite what to do with Donald Sutherland. Of course, with that cool intelligence and knowing grin, he gave the distinct impression of preferring things that way.
Irreverence was a Sutherland specialty, his voice had a faint smirk in it, and that irreverence extended to the career itself. It was as unpredictable and varied as it was long and full — and it was very long and very full. Sutherland, who died Thursday, at 88, has no fewer than 200 credits on IMDb.
To young filmgoers, he’s best known as President Snow, in the “Hunger Games” films. To those a generation older, he’s best known as Kiefer Sutherland’s dad. The two of them played father and son in a 2015 western, “Forsaken.”
To several generations before that, he’s best known for … a lot: “M*A*S*H” (1970), “Klute” (1971), “Don’t Look Now” (1973), “Ordinary People” (1980), “JFK” (1991). The list goes on.
In Oliver Stone’s film Sutherland plays X, the character who knows everything there is to know about the Kennedy assassination. X is acute, subversive, calmly crazed, off to the side, and unforgettable. In other words, he’s as close to a classic Donald Sutherland role as there is.
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That Hollywood couldn’t peg Sutherland was one reason he never received an Academy Award nomination. That didn’t mean Hollywood didn’t value him. In 2017, the Academy gave him a lifetime achievement Oscar. “I wish I could say thank you to all the characters I’ve played,” Sutherland said in his acceptance speech, “thank them for using their lives to inform my lives.”
The variety among those characters is startling. An actor who cannot be pegged is an actor who cannot be typecast. Sutherland never was. He’s impressively stolid in “Klute” and “Ordinary People.” He’s no less impressively wild in “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970), where his character is the aptly named Sergeant Oddball, and “M*A*S*H.” He needs to be a bit stolid and wild both, as the chief non-pod person in the 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
Sutherland plays a film director in “Alex in Wonderland” (1970) and Christ — yes, that Christ — in “Johnny Got His Gun” (1971). He’s a sadistic Fascist in “1900″ (1976) and Nazi spy in “Eye of the Needle” (1981). But wait, Sutherland, who was a stout liberal in real life, is an anti-apartheid activist in “A Dry White Season” (1987). He’s a Park Avenue art dealer in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993) and elderly astronaut in “Space Cowboys (2000). He also plays an elderly astronaut in “Ad Astra” (2019), but typecasting is avoided since this one’s retired.
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Sutherland was a classic movie ‘tweener: more than a character actor without ever being a name-above-the-title star. That status gave him great flexibility, and that flexibility made his career more fun — for him no less than viewers.
It also made him a great costar. There he is, costarring with Elliott Gould, in *M*A*S*H”; Jane Fonda, in “Klute”; Julie Christie, in “Don’t Look Now”; Mary Tyler Moore, in “Ordinary People.” Put him in a two-shot, and Sutherland was the rare actor who was as good at reacting as acting. There is nothing so antithetical to stardom as egalitarianism, and Sutherland was an artistic egalitarian (except when stealing a scene, of course, something he was quite capable of).
Any career that long is likely to include surprises. Any career that long with an actor as quicksilvery as Sutherland is going to include big surprises. He was the goofy one in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967). He starred in a Fellini movie (“Casanova,” 1976). He has a cameo in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978). He’s Homer Simpson, the original one, in the 1975 film adaptation of Nathanael West’s “The Day of the Locust.” Two decades later, he got to cross paths with the other Homer, as a guest voice on “The Simpsons.” Truly, it was that kind of career.
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Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.