He opened the 1980s by co-starring beside Mary Tyler Moore in the critically acclaimed “Ordinary People,” which braved new territory in dramatizing family dysfunction. The movie garnered six Oscar nominations (winning four, including Best Picture, Best Director, and for young Timothy Hutton, Best Supporting Actor). Sutherland was again bypassed.
Since 1990, Sutherland has appeared in “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer,” “A View To Kill,” the cautionary “Outbreak,” and most famously to the youngest filmgoers, “The Hunger Games” franchise. His TV work included “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Commander In Chief,” and the 2018 true crime series “Trust,” in which he portrayed billionaire J. Paul Getty. Sutherland leaves a legacy of dozens of memorable scenes.
One cannot imagine “M*A*S*H,” “Ordinary People,” or “JFK” without his quite varied contributions to those three works. In the Korean War sendup of the military, he is, as he was so often cast, irreverently witty. In “Ordinary People,” he is a grieving father attempting to bridge The Generation Gap. In “JFK,” he is a mysterious stranger bearing government secrets that may be missing links to the crime of the century (an archetype arguably adapted into “The X-Files”‘ Cigarette Smoking Man).
Through the years, Sutherland worked with Brando and Kidman, Lee Marvin and John Belushi, Jennifer Lawrence, as well as DeNiro, Hoffman, and Will Smith. He turned down important roles in both “Straw Dogs” and “Deliverance” because the films were violent. While Sutherland had his share of military roles, he was vocally opposed to U.S. and Canadian involvement in the Vietnam War. He earned Golden Globe Award nominations as Best Actor for both “M*A*S*H” and “Ordinary People,” in addition to several Golden Globe nominations as a supporting actor on TV, For 2002’s HBO movie “Path To War,” he won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. He was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2017. He was 81 years old.