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.
Earnest, preachy and melodramatic to a fault, “Mississippi Scholar” is exactly the sort of movie that the independent cinema was born to create.
Director and co-writer Marcus Bleecker’s film may traffic in tropes and cliches. But it has a vivid sense of place and a clear notion of the message it wants to send, and that message’s relevence.
Set in an unnamed small Mississippi city — it was filmed in Baldwyn, Saltillo and Fulton — the film is “a mind is a terrible thing to waste” in cinematic form. Our “Scholar” was born into a world of substance abuse, the racist legal traps of the country’s remaining marijuana laws and has a baby-mama-in-waiting and a drunken parent whom our teen hero is responsible for as his burdens.
But he has a world of promise that one dedicated teacher, his dead father (whom he still converses with) and even he himself can see if he can just “stay focused” and keep his eyes on this very personal prize — college and a better life beyond Ole Miss.
Shannon Brown is James, a kid with great grades and an ill-tempered mother (Gisla Stringer) who crawled into the bottle a long time ago and has no interest in crawling out.
But he’s got an ad hoc support system helping him through his senior year. His aunt (GiGi Marie Gaines) feeds him and keeps him advised of his mother’s latest tumbles. His dead dad (co-writer Obba Babatundé) passes on wisdom about his mother in fortune cookie-sized bites when father and son chat — at the cemetary or elsewhere.
“Hurt people hurt people.”
His English teacher, Mr. Keating (Sonny Marinelli) has high hopes for him, hopes he’s willing to nag the kid to achieve — “It takes only five seconds to get in trouble, and 25 years to get out of it!”
His school principal (Lance E. Nichols) expects greatness, but has learned to never get his hopes up over any Black boy at his integrated high school.
Even Ray-Ray (Jeremy Isaiah Earl), the ex-con drug dealer, takes a brotherly interest in the kid who is his “best distributor.” That money is what keeps a roof over James’ and his mother’s heads, and pays for his Jordans.
His white boy bestie (Dominic Arvielo) may act “Black,” but will he have James’ back when things get real?
And girlfriend Tammy (Aysa Branch) may be far and away the prettiest girl in school. But she’s taking the easy route, relying on her looks to achieve the limited goals the script sketches out for her.
“We’re gonna have ourselves a baby as soon as we graduate!”
Bleecker’s film covers all of the bases, all of the tropes and most of the cliches as James faces Big Choices with perils to his plan at every turn. Maybe taking him to visit the football-mad University of Mississippi isn’t the deal-maker his teacher hopes it is, as James doesn’t “see anybody who looks like me.”
Only a real civil rights hero (Dr. Donald Cole) can set him straight, relating the story of what James Meredith and generations before him did to give James this chance. Or can he?
“Mississippi Scholar” is well-crafted and an easy film to like, with relatable if “stock” characters and decent performances from all but the most amateurish (James’ classmates) cast members. But it’s entirely too predictable to surprise and too pre-digested to have an edge.
Worthy subject and novel setting aside, we’ve seen this story on the big screen and the small one too many times to count, seen this kid’s hand played out in every variation the cards have to offer.
But it makes a fine calling card for its cinematographer turned director, and let’s hope we see Bleecker’s name and hear his voice in another Deep South indie film, and soon.
Rating: TV-14, violence, profanity
Cast: Shannon Brown, Gisla Stringer, Sonny Marinelli, Jeremy Isiaah Earl, Aysa Branch and
Obba Babatundé
Credits: Directed by Marcus Bleecker, scripted by
Obba Babatundé, Marcus Bleecker and P.J. Leonard. A Narrative Distribution release on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:24
Entertainment
Dan Finnerty profaned Bonnie Tyler’s hit in ‘Old School.’ He regrets the f-bombs at her shows
For a certain swath of millennials, Dan Finnerty’s rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of The Heart” in the frat comedy “Old School” is its definitive performance.
In the 2003 film, the Dan Band’s sweaty, inappropriately exuberant version of the ’80s power ballad upstages Will Ferrell’s wedding. The scene forever changed the lyrics of Tyler’s hit to something much more profane, but no less yearning.
After Tyler’s death at 75, Finnerty (who played a similar role in “The Hangover,” among many other comedies) reflected on his sideways journey into Tyler’s career, and how one quick scene on a two-decade-old comedy still endures.
You’ve had a pretty unique relationship to Bonnie Tyler’s music, how are you feeling after she passed?
It’s definitely sad. Everybody is texting me. I never met her, but what an impact she had on me. I grew up right when “Total Eclipse” came out in the ’80s, and it was such a huge song at the time. It had never left my head. I was always just belting that song out because it’s so epic, from Jim Steinman’s writing to Bonnie’s performance.
Why does that moment from “Old School” still endure? It arrived at the last cusp of the DVD era before culture transitioned into the internet and streaming video.
Without YouTube and the internet, you really had to grab pop culture moments from your memory. That’s definitely one of the reasons why pulling it out seemed obscure when we did “Old School.” People were like, “Oh my God, yes, I love this f— song.” Which is so different now because everything’s at your fingertips, so you can’t really rely on like pulling back some nostalgia moment because it’s always around anyway now with the internet. But people were reacting as much to me dropping the f-bombs as the nostalgia of the song, and rediscovering it and realizing that the song kicks ass and never stops kicking it.
Was the song already in your repertoire when you filmed “Old School?”
I was doing my show with the Dan Band in Los Angeles, and [director] Todd Phillips ended up coming to one of the performances. I met him afterwards, and he was like, “There’s actually a wedding scene in this movie. What song would you sing at a wedding?” I had just started working on a medley of “Total Eclipse,” and I think at the time I was going to do “Holding Out for a Hero,” but then I just merged it with “Private Dancer,” and he was like, “Oh my God, I love it.” The following Monday, he called and he’s like, “Can you put that together?”
The bit works because you totally commit to the song’s hugeness, and the profanity slips by like it’s spontaneous. You can tell you love the song on the merits.
I had never done it before. But Todd had seen my show, and when we went to do the first take, I didn’t think I was allowed to swear. But I obviously was swearing during my live show in all my little medleys. He came running up and he’s like, “Are you gonna swear like you do in the show?” I’m like, “Am I allowed to?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” So I’m like, “Buckle the f— up.”
But basically, what I was doing was honestly trying to match Bonnie’s commitment at the level she did with her voice, which is what I loved about all of her performances and Jim Steinman’s music. It’s just over-the-top commitment and drama. The swearing was just me being like, “How can I bump this up one notch when they’ve already just nailed it?”
Did you ever hear from either of them about what they thought about the film?
I’d tried to get Bonnie to do a duet of “Total Eclipse,” and I reached her management. He was like, “Well, Bonnie’s willing to do the song as long as there’s no profanity because she’s not a profane person.” I was like, “Well, neither the f— am I. I was an altar boy.” It didn’t end up working out, because I knew if I did the song without the swearing, people would be like, “What the f—?” But later, met Jim Steinman. I mentioned it to Steinman, and he was like, “Oh, I wish they called me because I can make Bonnie do anything, she’d love the swearing,” which killed me.
You did kind of alter her song forever for a certain generation.
I was just picturing them both hating how I bastardized their song. So when I finally met Steinman, he was like, “No, no, no! I f—ing loved it. In fact, I’ve always thought of all those epic booms, the Kurzweil, all the big hits in ‘Total Eclipse,’ those were musical f—s.”
Mostly I wanted to just find Bonnie and apologize to her for all the drunk guys I have pictured over the years at her concert screaming “F—” ever since that movie.
That song became your biggest hit as a comedian. How’d it change your life?
It got funnier the older we got. When I would do “Total Eclipse” right after “Old School” came out, it would get the biggest reaction. There was one set early on at the Playboy Mansion, we were hired to play some party there. There were just a bunch of drunk guys at the mansion and a couple Playboy bunnies that were contractually hired to walk around and wave. They’re like, “Play ‘Total Eclipse,’” and so I did. Then they’re like, “Play it again.” I’m like, “OK.” Then “Play it again.” I was like, “Here we go, give them what they want.” It was the least amount of work I had to do for a song that was pre-loved from a moment in a movie.
God, I hope she knew how much I loved her and apologize for all the drunk guys that had probably f-bombed the hell out of her concerts.
Before that song, people were like, “Do you have a flier for your next show?” I’m like, “For what?” But once “Old School” happened, suddenly a record label was like, “We want to do a live album.” I’m like, “Who’s gonna buy it?” But my manager is like, “Don’t say s— like that. There’s a record label that wants to make an album with you, dumbass.”
The whole thing has just been a surprise, but it’s been a good one. We’re playing this festival in Canada next weekend, and God, that song’s going to be such a big moment.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: July 11th, 2026 / 10:07 PM
EVIL DEAD BURN movie poster | ©2026 New Line Cinemas / Screen Gems
Rating: R
Stars: Soheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Errol Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Greta van den Brink
Writers: Sébastien Vaniček & Florent Bernard, based on characters created by Sam Raimi
Director: Sébastien Vaniček
Distributor: New Line Cinema/Screen Gems
Release Date: July 12, 2026
The first THE EVIL DEAD was released in 1982, launching the careers of (among others) filmmaker Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell. The film had two direct sequels, 1987’s EVIL DEAD II and 1992’s ARMY OF DARKNESS, both also directed by Raimi and starring Campbell. A three-season TV series, ASH VS EVIL DEAD (2015-2018), executive-produced by Raimi and again starring Campbell, continued the narrative.
The franchise was resurrected for the big screen with a quasi-remake, 2013’s EVIL DEAD, followed by 2023’s EVIL DEAD RISE, and now EVIL DEAD BURN. The latter three have Raimi and Campbell among the producers, but not as immediate creative participants.
The Raimi-directed EVIL DEAD movies centered on Campbell’s Ash, who found himself battling relentless Deadites (think chatty, sadistic rotting undead) summoned by the (fictional) forbidden text THE NECRONOMICON (originally invented by writer H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920s for his Cthulhu Mythos). The Deadites delight in transforming luckless humans into, well, the evil dead.
The first three films and the TV series were splat-stick comedy, with jokes cheek and jowl with the gore.
The subsequent films have flashes of humor, but they are much more focused on straight horror, as well as family drama.
This is absolutely the case with EVIL DEAD BURN, written by Sébastien Vaniček & Florent Bernard and directed by Vaniček.
Here, the family at the center of events is on the verge of imploding, even without demonic intervention.
EVIL DEAD BURN is tangentially related to EVIL DEAD RISE, insofar as the earlier film’s wraparound deposited Deadite Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas) in a lake. At the start of BURN, two unfortunate fishermen snag a Deadite played by Greta van den Brink, who was Thomas’s stunt double on RISE, so this may be the same character.
Meanwhile, Joseph (Hunter Doohan) is in a dusty upstairs room, curiously perusing clippings, writings, reel-to-reel tape recordings and more amassed by his grandfather. We’ll learn that Grandpa is considered the family flake because he declined to spend time with his wife and daughters in favor of traveling the world investigating the occult.
A recording Joseph’s grandfather left behind conveniently provides us with what we (and Joseph) need in terms of exposition. This includes a bit about the Kandarian dagger, which the Deadites want to obtain and destroy, as it’s the only item that can permanently kill them. Grandad has left it somewhere on the premises.
It’s Joseph’s birthday, and there’s a celebration for him at the party club owned by his older brother Will (George Pullar) and Will’s French wife Alice (Soheila Yacoub). Joseph’s supportive girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) tries to mediate as Will first condescends to his little brother, then gets into an aggressive fight with Alice.
The argument spills into the club parking lot, where we see further evidence of Will’s controlling, contemptuous and violent personality before he gets into his car and drives away at top speed.
Meanwhile, our lake Deadite has taken to the road, where she easily causes Will to crash. The car erupts in flames.
At the sparse funeral held at a crematorium, Alice is wearing running shoes, to the great displeasure of her grieving in-laws Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Errol Shand). Susan’s elderly mother Polly (Maude Davey) is in a wheelchair and keeps confusing Susan with Susan’s deceased sibling Bonnie.
Susan and Edgar generally resent Alice and blame her for Will’s death. They also disapprove of Joseph, who they view as a slacker. He hasn’t done a good job of maintaining the isolated two-story family home he’s been given by his parents, and Susan takes a very dim view of Joseph’s investigation into his grandfather’s interests.
So, this is a toxic setup even before Edgar decides he must take one last look at Will in his coffin before the cremation. Then everybody heads back – Edgar is infected, but not “showing” yet – to the house.
From here, EVIL DEAD BURN goes pretty much where we anticipate, and where the subgenre demands, with almost nonstop violence, excellent practical effects, lots of gore, and admirable acting of that encompasses unhappiness, terror, and taunting Deadite glee.
Director Vaniček makes sure to incorporate some of the EVIL DEAD touchstones, including the racing low-to-the-ground shots (using one for a nice in-joke), chainsaws, and some catchphrases. At the same time, there are plenty of new set pieces and types of physical altercations.
With no forcing at all, EVIL DEAD BURN serves as a solid metaphor for both spousal abuse and what happens when parents turn a willful blind eye to the nature of a favored child, to the detriment of everyone and everything in the vicinity.
For those who care about these things (does this really even count as a spoiler?), the dog dies, albeit there’s at least a plot logistics reason here.
There are a couple inconsistencies, like why some people become infected so fast while others take much more time and still others seem immune. Mostly, though, EVIL DEAD BURN does what it’s supposed to do as a horror movie overall and as part of its specific lineage.
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