CELEBRITY BIRTHDAY SPOTLIGHT

Donald McNichol Sutherland
Born: July 17, 1935
Age: 72
Birth Place: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada





He was the son of Dorothy Isobel (née McNichol) and Frederick McLea Sutherland, who worked in sales and ran the local gas, electricity, and bus company. Being raised in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, he took an early interest in the entertainment industry, becoming a radio DJ by the time he was fourteen years old. He was a sickly child; he battled polio, rheumatic fever and hepatitis.

He trained in London and worked on stage and television there early in his career, then broke into film with a tiny part in the 1963 British romantic drama The World Ten Times Over. He is an actor with a film career spanning over 50 years. His most notable movie roles included offbeat soldiers war movies as The Dirty Dozen, in 1967, and M*A*S*H and Kelly's Heroes in 1970.

Off-screen, he spent a great deal of time protesting the Vietnam War, and, with the participation of fellow protestor and Klute co-star Jane Fonda, made the anti-war documentary F.T.A. in 1972. Unlike many Canadian actors, Sutherland never became an American citizen.


His first wife was Lois Hardwick she was a retired actress. His second wife, Shirley Douglas, is a well-known actress in Canada. Their son is Kiefer Sutherland, star of TV's 24. His third and last wife is the Canadian actress Francine Racette, best known for her work in numerous French-language films. They moved to France in the early 1980s to raise their family.