Born in 1935 to a family of Scottish origins in Saint John, a Canadian town in the province of New Brunswick, but raised in Halifax, Donald Sutherland in his long acting career he took part in more than 180 films and won the Oscar in 2017.
His debut in cinema took place in an Italian film, The Castle of the Living Dead, from 1964 and directed by Luciano Ricci and Lorenzo Sabatini.
In 1968 he appeared in the well-known film ‘The Dirty Dozen’ by Robert Aldrich but the real success came in 1970 with the film Robert Altman’s MASH where he plays Captain Benjamin Franklin set in a US field hospital during the Korean War.
Unforgettable is his participation, in 1976, in the work of Bernardo Bertolucci, Novecento next to Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu. Federico Fellini, in the same year, wanted him to play Giacomo Casanova in Il Casanova, filmed entirely in stage 5 of Cinecittà.
Other performances include the 1978 films Animal House by John Landis, Terror from Outer Space by Philip Kaufman, and The Eye of the Needle by Richard Marquand in 1981. And also Fire in 1991 directed by Ron Howard and, of the same year, JFK by Oliver Stone.
More interpretations for Outbreak by Wolfgang Petersen, Virus by John Bruno.
With Anthony Hopkins plays Instinct. Directed by Clint Eastwood in Space cowboys. In The Italian job of 2003 for the remake of Un colpo all’italiana of ’69. Then again back to Cold Mountain, Lord of war, pride and prejudice, An American haunting. In 2007 he was the protagonist of the TV series Dirty sexy money. Finally in 2017 the drama film Elia & John, the leisure seeker by Paolo Virzì.
He married three times and two of his sons, Rossif and Kiefer, with Shirley Douglas, pursued acting careers.