Donald McNicol Sutherland,
OC (born 17 July 1935) is a
Canadian character actor with a film career spanning over 50 years.
Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as
The Dirty Dozen, in 1967, and
M*A*S*H and
Kelly's Heroes in 1970, and
Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978. He is currently working in the American television series
Dirty Sexy Money.
Early life
Sutherland was born in
Saint John, New Brunswick, the son of Dorothy Isobel (
née McNichol) and Frederick McLea Sutherland, who worked in sales and ran the local gas, electricity, and bus company.
[Donald Sutherland Biography - Yahoo! Movies] 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.
