page_title: Donald Sutherland
section_title: Mid-career: 1972–2000
hierarchical_section_title: Donald Sutherland / Career / Mid-career: 1972–2000
caption_attribution_description: English: Grand Canal, southern part, Venice, Italy Čeština: Jižní část Velkého kanálu, Benátky, Itálie
context_page_description: Donald McNichol Sutherland CC is a Canadian actor whose film career spans more than seven decades. Sutherland has been nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards, winning two for his performances in the television films Citizen X and Path to War; the former also earned him a Primetime Emmy Award. An inductee of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canadian Walk of Fame, he also received a Canadian Academy Award for the drama film Threshold. Several media outlets and film critics describe him as one of the best actors who have never received an Academy Award nomination. In 2017, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his contributions to cinema.
  Sutherland rose to fame after starring in films including The Dirty Dozen, M*A*S*H, Kelly's Heroes, Klute, Don't Look Now, Fellini's Casanova, 1900, The Eagle Has Landed, Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Ordinary People, and Eye of the Needle. He later went on to star in many other films where he appeared either in leading or supporting roles such as A Dry White Season, JFK, Outbreak, A Time to Kill, Without Limits, Big Shot's Funeral, The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, Pride & Prejudice, Aurora Borealis and The Hunger Games franchise.
context_section_description: Sutherland starred with Gene Wilder in the 1970 comedy Start the Revolution Without Me. During the filming of the Academy Award-winning detective thriller Klute, Sutherland had an intimate relationship with co-star Jane Fonda. Sutherland and Fonda went on to co-produce and star together in the anti-Vietnam War documentary F.T.A. (1972), consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviews with American troops who were then on active service. A follow up to their teaming up in Klute, Sutherland and Fonda performed together in Steelyard Blues (1973), a "freewheeling, Age-of-Aquarius, romp-and-roll caper" from the writer David S. Ward.
  Sutherland found himself as a leading man throughout the 1970s in films such as the Venice-based psychological horror film Don't Look Now (1973), co-starring Julie Christie, a role which saw him nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, the war film The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Federico Fellini's Casanova (1976) and the thriller Eye of the Needle (which was filmed on location on the Isle of Mull, West Scotland). His role as Corpse of Lt. Robert Schmied in the Maximilian Schell's 1976 German film-directed End of the Game is listed in crazy credits, and as the ever-optimistic health inspector in the science fiction/horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) alongside Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum.
  He helped launch the internationally popular Canadian television series Witness to Yesterday, with a performance as the Montreal doctor Norman Bethune, a physician and humanitarian, largely talking of Bethune's experiences in revolutionary China. Sutherland also had a role as pot-smoking Professor Dave Jennings in National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978, making himself known to younger fans as a result of the movie's popularity. When cast, he was offered either $40,000 up front or two percent of the movie's gross earnings. Thinking the movie would certainly not be a big success, he chose the 40K upfront payment. The movie eventually grossed $141.6 million.
  He won acclaim for his performance in the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 epic film 1900 and as the conflicted father in the Academy Award-winning family drama Ordinary People (1980), alongside Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. In 1981, he narrated A War Story, an Anne Wheeler film. He played the role of physician-hero Norman Bethune in two biographical films in 1977 and 1990.
  Some of Sutherland's better known roles in the 1980s and 1990s were in the South African apartheid drama A Dry White Season (1989), alongside Marlon Brando and Susan Sarandon; as a sadistic warden in Lock Up (1989) with Sylvester Stallone; as an incarcerated pyromaniac in the firefighter thriller Backdraft (1990) alongside Kurt Russell and Robert De Niro, as the humanitarian doctor-activist Norman Bethune in 1990's  Bethune: The Making of a Hero, and as a snobbish New York City art dealer in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), with Stockard Channing and Will Smith.
  In the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK, he played a mysterious Washington intelligence officer, reputed to have been L. Fletcher Prouty, who spoke of links to the military–industrial complex in the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He played psychiatrist and visionary Wilhelm Reich in the video for Kate Bush's 1985 single, "Cloudbusting".
  In 1992, he played the role of Merrick in the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Kristy Swanson. In 1994, he played the head of a government agency hunting for aliens who take over people's bodies similar to the premise of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the movie of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 book The Puppet Masters.
  In 1994, Sutherland played a software company's scheming CEO in Barry Levinson's drama Disclosure opposite Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, and in 1995 was cast as Maj. Gen. Donald McClintock in Wolfgang Petersen's Outbreak. He was later cast in 1996 (for only the second time) with his son Kiefer in Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill.
  Sutherland played famous American Civil War General P.G
caption: The 1973 thriller Don't Look Now was shot in Venice. Both Sutherland and co-star Julie Christie were praised for their performances.
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