Entertainment
Prolific actor Donald Sutherland, the stately star of 'MASH,' 'Ordinary People' and 'Hunger Games,' has died
Donald Sutherland, the prolific Canadian actor who roared to fame in the irreverent antiwar classic “MASH” and captivated audiences with his dramatic performances in films such as “Ordinary People” and “Don’t Look Now,” has died.
A mainstay of Hollywood for more than six decades, Sutherland died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, his agency confirmed in a statement. He was 88.
Son Kiefer Sutherland also confirmed his father’s death “with a heavy heart” in a statement Thursday morning on social media. “I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. 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. A life well lived.”
Donald Sutherland’s body of work showcased his transformative range, shifting comfortably from drama to comedy and bouncing between heavier and lighter roles with ease. Tall at 6-foot-4 with shock white hair and piercing blue eyes, he was difficult to miss whether he was playing a zany oddball, an icy tyrant or a sadistic villain. In all, he had nearly 200 film or television roles.
“It’s characters who make pictures,” he told The Times in 1995. “Essentially my job is to provide information about them.”
Deep in his career, as he shifted between leading and character parts, Sutherland thrived in smaller roles that ordinarily called for an older actor who’d long ago been typecast as a villain or a kooky sidekick. But Sutherland had the winning ability to transform those small roles into complex characters who often helped elevate the film.
On the small screen, Sutherland also appeared in “Human Trafficking,” “Commander in Chief,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Pillars of the Earth” and “Trust.” Though he originally intended to be a theatrical actor, his only Broadway appearance was in Edward Albee’s short-lived adaptation of “Lolita” in 1981.
Donald McNichol Sutherland was born in St. John, a small fishing village in New Brunswick, Canada, on July 17, 1935. The town had only 5,000 residents, he said, and “that was when the train rolled into town.” One of four children, his mother was a mathematician and his father a salesman.
Initially, he planned to be an engineer and attended Victoria College in Toronto, where he earned a degree in engineering and drama. It was also where he met his first wife, Lois Hardwick. His love of acting began in a Nova Scotia movie theater when he was a teen, but movie-acting seemed too lofty a pursuit, so he tried his luck in theater instead.
“It’s not that theater was my first love. My first love was just to be an actor,” he told The Times. “I was kind of dumb and cowish, and I didn’t think movies were something I could ever be part of. I don’t know why I presumed that the theater would be. It was more ordinary, I suppose.”
He moved to England in 1956 to study acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art but dropped out after nine months because he disliked its psychological approach to acting. He went on to tour with various repertory companies and appeared in several BBC television productions, including bit parts in “The Saint” and “The Avengers.”
Rejection became all-too familiar. When he tried to break onto the big screen in 1962, he came away thinking his audition had gone well. The next morning the director phoned him. “The role we’re casting is that of a guy who lives next door,” the director said. “You don’t look like you’ve ever lived next door to anyone.”
He finally made his first movie, “The Castle of the Living Dead,” in 1964 and followed it with a series of undistinguished films such as “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” and “Die! Die! My Darling!” His break came when he arrived in Hollywood in 1967, a year after his first marriage ended, to co-star in the 1968 thriller “The Split.”
“We had no money,” said Sutherland, who by then was married to his second wife, actress Shirley Douglas. (They divorced in 1970.) So he called his “Oedipus the King” co-star Christopher Plummer of “Sound of Music” fame, who was working in Stratford, Canada, to get his input.
“I woke him up,” Sutherland told The Times in 2011. “He loaned me $1,500. Incredible. We were on a Boeing 707 — Shirley, her son Tom. Kiefer and [his twin] Rachel were probably 3 or 4 months old. I had a raincoat on and I was holding Kiefer, and when we landed in Los Angeles, he threw up all over me.”
Donald Sutherland and son Kiefer Sutherland photographed in 2016.
(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
The actor used a clip of his appearance on “The Saint” to land a role in his first major American film, “The Dirty Dozen,” in 1967. Sutherland credited legendary producer Ingo Preminger and director Robert Aldrich, who oversaw the 1967 World War II flick, for landing his later role in the film “MASH.”
“I was a glorified extra” in “The Dirty Dozen,” Sutherland said. “They hired legitimate actors to play the bottom six of the dozen.”
But he quickly rose to fame in 1970 as the cocky surgeon Capt. Hawkeye Pierce in “MASH” and then as the neurotic platoon commander Oddball in “Kelly’s Heroes.” He went on to appear in such seminal films as Alan J. Pakula’s mystery “Klute,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic “1900” and Federico Fellini’s “Casanova.”
The plum roles continued to roll in with “The Eagle Has Landed,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Day of the Locust,” and the 1973 occult thriller “Don’t Look Now,” which stirred controversy for a sex scene with Sutherland and Julie Christie that was unusually graphic for its time.
After being a leading man through most of the 1970s, Sutherland began alternating between leading roles in films such as “A Dry White Season” with Marlon Brando and Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning “Ordinary People” and character roles in films such as “JFK” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
He also appeared in lesser films that, nonetheless, became cult favorites, such as National Lampoon’s “Animal House,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
His turn as the villainous leader President Coriolanus Snow opposite Jennifer Lawrence in the blockbuster “Hunger Games” trilogy gave him a new wave of recognition with younger audiences.
“It was funny,” Sutherland told The Times in 2017, “at the beginning with ‘The Hunger Games,’ to walk through an airport and suddenly you feel this tug and you look down and it’s some young person — always a girl, never a boy. And her mother is standing there and they say, ‘Could you take a photograph with my daughter?’ And we’d be standing beside each other and I’d be looking at the camera and the girl would say, ‘Could you look mean?’ ”
Despite his lengthy resume, Sutherland had a dearth of accolades, winning but a few major acting awards for his performances — an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the 1995 miniseries “Citizen X” and another Globe for 2002’s “Path to War.” But the lack of award season hardware didn’t seem to trouble him.
“My career has been all downhill since the age of 11. I did my first play, ‘The Male Animal,’ at Toronto University’s Hart House theater. The audience laughed and applauded when I came on, they applauded when I went off, and they applauded when I came on again. I’ve never had it as good since,” he said.
In 2017 he was given an honorary Oscar, which recognizes extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement and exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences.
The actor’s short-lived romance with Jane Fonda after making “Klute” in 1971 introduced him to left-wing politics and a second career as a hard-charging activist. The two had met at a Black Panther Party benefit in Los Angeles where he voiced his opposition of the Vietnam War. Sutherland, Fonda and other antiwar activists went on to form the Free Theatre Associates as an alternative to Bob Hope’s USO tours in Vietnam. Documents declassified in 2017 revealed the CIA had placed him on a watch list because of his antiwar activities.
Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore star in the 1980 film “Ordinary People,” which was directed by Robert Redford.
(Paramount Studios)
Watching his father’s seminal films was a revelation for Kiefer Sutherland, who came to appreciate his father’s body of work as a teenager. “I knew he was a famous actor, but I didn’t know how prolific he was. I didn’t know how diverse all of those characters were.”
The younger Sutherland, best known for his leading role in the television drama “24,” said he even called his father to apologize for not knowing the magnitude of his career.
The two Sutherlands both appeared in Joel Schumacher’s 1996 thriller “A Time to Kill,” but they did not share any scenes. That changed when they played an estranged father and son in the western “Forsaken” in 2015.
Sutherland said he generally didn’t watch his films after they were released, but when he did, he said he noticed room for improvement.
“I have to be truthful — I am still looking forward when I look back. All I see are mistakes,” he told The Times. “When you are working on a picture, all of your concentration, all of your intensity is directed toward the heart of it, to such a degree it burns inside of you. Then after it’s over, it’s gone.”
Sutherland is survived by wife Francine Racette; sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus and Kiefer; daughter Rachel, and four grandchildren, including “Veep” actress Sarah Sutherland.
1 of 5 | Nick Jonas (L) and Paul Rudd star in “Power Ballad,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
LOS ANGELES, May 28 (UPI) — Power Ballad, in select theaters Friday, introduces several provocative themes about creativity and the music industry. Unfortunately, it only pays them lip service and leaves many important ones on the table.
Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is the lead singer of an Irish wedding band who loses the party crowd when he plays his own originals from his U.S. touring days. At one wedding, the bride invites her childhood friend, former boy band singer Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas).
After singing a duet at the wedding, Danny and Rick spend the night together jamming in Danny’s room. Danny even leaves Rick a generous parting gift, though his promise that Rick can get in touch with him through his managers seems empty.
When Danny’s manager, Mac (Jack Reynor) rejects his new solo submissions, Danny records “How to Write a Song (Without You)” which Rick played for him during their night in Ireland. Rick finds out when he hears it in the mall six months later.
This raises poignant questions about authorship. Rick wrote the song but never recorded it. Danny recorded it and made it a hit, but claimed authorship.
The script by John Carney and Peter McDonald goes into thorough detail about how Rick cannot establish a record of writing the song prior to meeting Danny. He has no demos, never shared it with his wedding band, and even his wife (Marcella Plunkett) and daughter (Beth Fallon) can’t remember it out of all the music he’s played in the house.
It’s less surprising that Mac shuts down Rick’s claim and threatens legal retaliation, which a humble Irish wedding singer could never afford to battle. What’s more surprising is which obvious questions Carney and McDonald never think to ask.
Danny got a hit out of “How to Write a Song (Without You).” He can ride that for a bit but what is he going to do when he has to write another and all he’s got are the same trite songs the label rejected before?
Mac and Danny allude to an EP he released that included “How to Write a Song” but we don’t hear any of the other tracks. What B-sides did Mac accept to justify a tour off one hit single?
Danny tells his girlfriend (Havana Rose Liu) that he wrote the song for her. Not only does she never find out, question or appear again in the film, she also doesn’t find out when he later takes two groupies to the hot tub.
Instead, Power Ballad seems more invested in mocking Rick for claiming he had a hand in a hit. It must be hard to live with the song ubiquitous everywhere he goes, and especially when a married couple requests he perform it for them. It seems particularly heartless when Rick’s wife and daughter mock him for it. That they don’t believe he wrote it suggests far deeper conflict in that family, but the film never gets into that either.
Rick also lashes out too hard when he’s defensive. It becomes uncharacteristically bitter for a John Carney movie.
The ultimate confrontation between Rick and Danny is unsatisfying. Their jam session was genuine, two musicians bonding over the art when Rick does not care about Danny’s celebrity.
By the time they meet again, Danny’s arc is reductively “hurt people hurt people.” He’s insecure, and boy, would it have been interesting to see him put to the test to follow up “How to Write a Song” by… writing another song.
It also strains credulity that “How to Write a Song (Without You)” is the comeback hit for Danny. It’s fine but not notably better than his other demos.
Begin Again and Sing Street had original music that sounded like it could sell albums on its own. Once literally became a Broadway musical. By Power Ballad, we’ve got a song less catchy than fictional movie songs like “That Thing You Do” or “Way Back Into Love” from Music & Lyrics.
The film does contrast Rick’s heartfelt performance with Danny’s poser version. A sold out Madison Square Garden doesn’t know the difference, but the viewer of Power Ballad does.
Other bright spots are sporadic and disjointed. Jonas takes some gentle jabs at boy band music. They’d land harder if his character ultimately did man up.
They do portray diverse weddings. Fortunately, LGBTQ unions get screen time along with more heteronormative ones.
A nightmare visualizes Rick’s real insecurities comically. Rick and bandmate Sandy (McDonald) perpetuate a cute scheme to get past security, and their actual “in” with Danny was legitimately established previously. Sandy choosing music over a party girl hitting on him is endearing.
Carney’s earlier movies were genuinely uplifting and inspiring even with their share of heartbreaks. His film about struggling to regain earlier inspiration ultimately faces the same very dilemma and blows it like the movie’s antagonist does.
Lionsgate will release Power Ballad nationwide June 5.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Grizz Chapman, an actor best known for his role as Grizz on NBC’s Emmy-winning comedy “30 Rock,” has died. He was 52.
Chapman’s cousin, Donte Harrison, confirmed the actor’s death on social media.
“Life gave my cousin Grizz Chapman some heavy battles, but he fought them with strength and dignity until the very end,” Harrison wrote. “A lot of people knew him as the sitcom star from 30 Rock, but we knew the man behind the screen. A good heart, good energy, and somebody who made an impact in this life.
“After years of fighting illness and dialysis, he passed peacefully in his sleep on May 22nd, 2026. I’m thankful we got time to reconnect 2 months before his passing.”
Born Mack D. Chapman on April 16, 1974, in Brooklyn, N.Y., Chapman got the name Grizz while working as a security guard at nightclubs around New York. The claim to fame of the 7-foot-tall security guard turned actor would be portraying a character that resembled himself: a towering bodyguard named Grizz.
Chapman played the mild-mannered bodyguard across 80 episodes of the wildly popular sitcom “30 Rock,” which starred Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and Alec Baldwin. Chapman’s character was part of the entourage of Tracy Jordan (played by Morgan).
Chapman told Cracked in 2024 that landing “30 Rock” was the “hardest/easiest audition I ever had in my life.”
But it wasn’t until the second season of the show that Chapman felt he really broke through as a performer. On Episode 210, he performs a rendition of “Midnight Train to Georgia” alongside the veteran ensemble. “That showed so many levels of our talents — we got a chance to dance, we got a chance to sing, we got a chance to take direction and to be funny.”
In addition to acting in various projects, including the 2014 film “The Cobbler,” which starred Adam Sandler, and the 2016 thriller “Money Monster,” starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, Chapman was an advocate for the National Kidney Foundation.
The actor battled high blood pressure and kidney disease and struggled with his weight for years, and in 2009, he announced he was seeking a donor for a kidney transplant. During an appearance on “The Dr. Oz Show,” the actor said, “I don’t want to go through this forever.”
Chapman told Dr. Oz that he’d coped with the news by acknowledging it was “a scary situation” but deciding to “face it one way or another.”
When Dr. Oz asked him what he wished for, the actor said, “I want to stay alive.”
Chapman spent nearly two years undergoing dialysis treatments three days a week for 4½ hours a day while filming “30 Rock” and hoping for a donor. In the process, he lost more than 150 pounds, hoping to be fit enough for the procedure. After the episode of “Dr. Oz” aired, a fan of Chapman’s, Ryan Perkins, flew from Arizona to New York to meet the actor. Perkins, then in his early 20s, knew he wanted to do something that could change someone’s life.
“I was emotional. I was excited. I wanted to scream. It was exciting to meet someone with that kind of willingness to help,” Chapman told the East Valley Tribune.
“How do you ever repay someone for something like that? You can’t. It’s not like borrowing $20 from someone and telling them you’re going to give it back. It’s something that you can never repay someone for.”
BY WYATT ALLISON
In 1976, Dustin Hoffman was the star of a film called Marathon Man, that followed a hotshot Columbia grad embroiled in a plot through his brother, with an evil Nazi war dentist played by the stage/screen legend Laurence Olivier. The film is regarded as one of the best examples of a 1970s paranoia-thriller. Now, 50 years removed from 1976, comes Tuner – a film directed by Oscar award winning documentarian Daniel Roher — also with Dustin Hoffman — that plays like something a little bit mysterious but intriguing, as you see its title on a summer night theater marquee.
Tuner follows Niki White (Leo Woodall), a talented piano tuner with a unique and meticulous auditory condition. As he trails New York City’s streets, hallowed concert halls, and brownstone neighborhoods with his blunt and charismatic mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), Niki encounters a rotating cast of clients, including Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a keen piano student who challenges his moral complexity.
When security contractor Uri (Lior Raz) learns Niki’s hypersensitive hearing is worth more for cracking safes than for opening Yamahas, he offers Niki a dangerous opportunity that could help Harry and his devoted wife Marla (Tony Award–winner Tovah Feldshuh) manage their suffocating medical debt.
As Niki is drawn deeper into the criminal underworld with Uri and his crew, his relationship with Ruthie is threatened, entangling him in a dangerous side hustle that gives his life some unfortunate obstacles.
I caught Tuner back in September of last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it really brought the house down. The slick, watchable cadence of this old-fashioned thriller is read like the box of an elevated frozen pizza — perhaps Rao’s? You know exactly what you’re getting into, and chances are you’ll be fairly satisfied and full by the time for dessert.
Director Roher won the Best Documentary Oscar for Navalny, a 2022 film about the poisoning of Russian journalist Alexei Navalny — who was critical about the government and leadership of Vladimir Putin. In Roher’s first narrative film, his guerilla-esque foundation is seen plenty as Tuner unfolds a lot like a documentary. The camera feels invisible, and each character plays off one another to a natural degree.
For Leo Woodall, the performance as Niki is carefully crafted and another entry into the “sad boy” with a talent gauntlet. His hearing gift is utterly believable, and coupled with the exceptional sound design, it’s hard not to find yourself right with Niki as he cracks safes and tries to get the girl. It’s a performance that any young actor should be bidding for, since genre thrillers like this tend to have a longer lifespan in the zeitgeist.
Black Bear Pictures, the independent film distributor behind Christy, could really use a hit. Much like Tuner, the studio is a great example of why more risks should be taken on smaller budget films with some recognizable faces in it. In a theatrical setting that can be clouded out by blockbuster, IP-driven filmmaking, Tuner is something worth seeing on a Friday night at the movies.
Tuner
Directed by Daniel Roher
Regal Downtown West
Released on Friday, May 29, 2026
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