- published: 22 Nov 2015
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Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC (born 17 July 1935) is a Canadian actor whose film career spans nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in popular war movies such as The Dirty Dozen, MASH and Kelly's Heroes, as well as characters in other popular films such as Klute, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, JFK, Ordinary People and, more recently, The Hunger Games. He is the father of actor Kiefer Sutherland.
Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, the son of Dorothy Isobel (née McNichol; 1892–1956) and Frederick McLea Sutherland (1894–1983), who worked in sales and ran the local gas, electricity, and bus company. His ancestry includes Scottish, as well as German and English. His teenage years were spent in Nova Scotia. He got his first part time job at age 14 as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He then studied at Victoria College, University of Toronto, where he met his first wife Lois Hardwick (not the child star of the same name), and graduated with a double major in engineering and drama. He had at one point been a member of the "UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto. He changed his mind about becoming an engineer, and subsequently left Canada for England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.