Donald Sutherland's talent, kindness remembered in Hollywood and back home in Canada
Friends, colleagues and admirers share memories of actor from on- and off-screen
Terry Haig has fond memories of the long drives he and Donald Sutherland would take from Georgeville, Que., to see the Montreal Expos baseball team at their home stadium.
As they drove, the on-screen giant — who kept up with baseball long after the Expos later left Montreal — would share life wisdom and acting tips.
"Donald was one of the greatest people I've ever met," said Haig, a Canadian journalist and fellow actor. "Donald was absolutely brilliant. Donald's commitment to the truth, in my mind, was contagious. It sharpened me up just a bit just to talk with him."
Haig was one of many friends, colleagues and fellow Canadians who shared fond memories of the late actor on Thursday after his family announced on Thursday he had died at the age of 88. They remembered Sutherland, a distinguished figure in Hollywood for the majority of his life, as a brilliant artist, generous mentor and devout Canadian.
But Sutherland's life and work were not forgotten by the people he worked with on the other side of the border, with Hollywood stars paying tribute to his life, his talent and his acting career.
Talent remembered by Hollywood
Sutherland's long career on the big screen saw him appear in varied projects — including dramas (Ordinary People, Cold Mountain) and thrillers (Eye of the Needle, Outbreak), action movies (The Italian Job), comedies (Animal House) and more. A younger generation of moviegoers knew him as the villainous President Snow from The Hunger Games movie series.
Jane Fonda, whose Oscar-winning role in Klute put her on screen in that 1971 film with Sutherland as her co-star, said she was stunned by the news of his death.
"I am heartbroken," she said in a statement posted to Instagram, showing the two of them on the set of Klute, alongside its director, Alan J. Pakula.
"We lost one of our greatest actors," actor Rob Lowe posted on X. "It was my honour to work with him many years ago, and I will never forget his charisma and ability."
Director Ron Howard praised Sutherland as "one of the most intelligent, interesting and engrossing film actors of all time."
Elliott Gould, who appeared in the film M*A*S*H with Sutherland, said his Canadian co-star was a talent to be remembered, and a good person, as well.
"Donald was a giant, not only physically but as a talent. He was also enormously kind and generous," the actor told The Associated Press in a statement.
"It's never easy losing the calibre of a human being and actor like Donald Sutherland, but this one really profoundly hurts because Donald was like my brother, and a big part of my own career."
In 2011, Sutherland's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles was unveiled, on a spot next to actor Kiefer Sutherland, his son. (Both father and son also have stars on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.)
Outside his big-screen projects, Sutherland appeared in many TV shows and mini-series — in more recent years including HBO's The Undoing and Trust, an FX series in which he portrayed the real-life billionaire J. Paul Getty.
Actor Billy Baldwin recalled working with Sutherland in 1990's Backdraft, as well as in the 1999 sci-fi thriller Virus and later on the TV show Dirty Sexy Money.
"There will never be another Donald Sutherland. We have lost a true acting master and a quirky, one of a kind, never met anyone like him before original," he said in a warm tribute on X.
Sutherland was made an officer of the Order of Canada in the late 1970s, and promoted to being a companion — the highest of the three levels of the honour — in 2019.
'We felt like we were talking to a Quebecer'
Haig and Sutherland were neighbours in Georgeville, a lakeside village in Quebec's scenic Eastern Townships.
Haig said the actor's residence, which he had owned since 1977, was his "emotional home" and where he chose to spend summers with his children — although he had houses in several other cities, including Paris, where his children were raised during the school year.
The family would summer in Quebec, Haig said.
Haig called the Saint John, N.B.,-born Sutherland a progressive who was passionate about environmental conservation, anti-war and championed several other causes.
"That's why he was a great actor," he said. "No matter how crazy and different the character was, we knew the essence of that character. That's what that was, his brilliance. And we cared about that character," Haig said.
Canadian film producer Denise Robert also recalled his fondness for Quebec. When Quebec director Denys Arcand tapped Sutherland for a role in his 2007 film, Days of Darkness, Robert said it almost as if Sutherland had known her and Arcand for a long time.
"It wasn't a big role.... He said that he accepted with great pleasure because his dream was to shoot with Denys Arcand," Robert told Radio-Canada.
"Quebec was part of his life. We felt like we were talking to a Quebecer when we spoke to him," she said, remembering his "humility" and "kindness."
She also recalled Sutherland's love for Quebec's Memphremagog Lake in Georgeville.
"He wanted to spend as much time as he could around the lake," said Johanne Lavoie, president of Memphremagog Conservation, a local non-profit organization working to protect the lake.
Lavoie hadn't met Sutherland, but knew the impact he had on the community and how he made the lake "shine around the world."
'He was marvellous'
Canadian film producer Martin Katz worked with Sutherland on 2011's The Man on the Train, an English-language remake of 2002's L'Homme du Train. Sutherland played a retired history professor who strikes up an unlikely, troubled friendship with a man who comes to the village to rob the local bank.
It was a minor role for a man who had by then become a Hollywood giant, but Katz said Sutherland didn't care.
"He was just thrilled to have meaty roles to play. We had a small budget, we had very little money to pay him, and none of that mattered to him. What mattered to him was the art, the craft," Katz said Thursday.
"He was marvellous."
With files from Rhianna Schmunk, Hénia Ould-Hammou, Geoff Nixon and The Associated Press