Donald Sutherland, Legendary Award-Winning Actor, Dies at 88

Donald Sutherland died in Miami Thursday after battling a long illness.

By Timothy Adams

Legendary actor Donald Sutherland has passed away at the age of 88. The agency CAA announced the news of Sutherland's death, as the actor died in Miami Thursday after battling a long illness. Donald Sutherland is the father of 24's Kiefer Sutherland and CAA Media Finance executive Roeg Sutherland. Donald Sutherland is known for his iconic roles in The Hunger Games franchise, MASH, Animal House, The Dirty Dozen, and much more. He is a former Emmy winner for his role in Citizen X, and is a 2017 Honorary Oscar recipient.

Donald Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, on July 17, 1935. His biggest acting break on the big screen came in the 1967 World War II drama The Dirty Dozen, where he played Vernon Pinkley. He was joined in the all-star cast by Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, Telly Savalas, and more. 

One of Sutherland's next big projects came in 1970 in another war movie, MASH, where he portrayed Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the Robert Altman film. MASH earned five Oscar nominations, winning the Best Screenplay category. It eventually inspired the CBS series of the same name.

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(Photo:

Donald Sutherland courtesy of Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images

- Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Hunger Games fans will remember Donald Sutherland as President Coriolanus Snow, the man who presided over the infamous Hunger Games. The prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes cast Tom Blyth as a young Coriolanus Snow, with the actor discussing what it was like to play a much different Coriolanus Snow than the one Donald Sutherland portrayed.

"Yeah, I kind of had to reserve or refrain myself from going down the rabbit hole of watching all those movies again and watching his performance again," Blyth said during a virtual press conference for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which ComicBook attended. "Obviously the first instinct I had was to try and recreate it somehow or to nod to it in kind of a savvy way. But the thing is that's never going to be slick. It's never going to be savvy. Everyone's going to be like, 'It feels like you're copying a performance that has already been great.' And you can't, the minute as an actor you try to recreate anything that works, whether it's something you've done or something another actor has done, it's the death of spontaneity, and you just can't recreate. It has to be fresh and it has to be in that moment. So very early on I kind of put that to the side and Francis [Lawrence] and I talked about making my own and also just asking what drives him now as opposed to what drives him later on when he is president and a dictator and a tyrant."

Sutherland was recently added to the cast of the Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves as Judge Isaac Parker, an imposing and commanding judge in the Fort Smith Courthouse with a complicated legacy. The anthology series hails from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.

Photo credit Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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