Donald Sutherland, the towering actor whose career spanned from ‘MASH’ to ‘Hunger Games,’ dies at 88

June 20, 2024 1:48 PM • Last updated: June 20, 2024 1:48 PM

FILE – Actor Donald Sutherland appears at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California on October 13, 2017. Sutherland, the towering Canadian actor whose career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at 88. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88.

Kiefer Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death on Thursday. Further details were not immediately available.

“Personally, I think he is one of the most important actors in film history,” Kiefer Sutherland said of X. “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that.”

The tall and lean Canadian actor with a grin that could be sweet or devilish was known for such offbeat characters as Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s “MASH,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the stoned professor in “Animal House.”

Before transitioning to a long career as a respected actor, Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, anti-establishment cinema of the 1970s.

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-up — but still eccentric — parts in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

He also recently starred in the films ‘Hunger Games’ and the HBO limited series ‘The Undoing’. He never retired and worked regularly until his death.

“I like working. I love working passionately,” Sutherland told Charlie Rose in 1998. “I love feeling how my hand fits into another character’s glove. I feel enormous freedom; time stops for me. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, but I’m still a little crazy.”

In 2017 he received an honorary Oscar.

FILE – Actor Donald Sutherland appears at the premiere of the film “The Burnt Orange Heresy” at the 76th Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy on September 7, 2019. Sutherland, the towering Canadian actor whose career spanned “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at the age of 88. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)

FILE – Donald Sutherland appears at the Oscars in Los Angeles on March 4, 2018. Sutherland, the great Canadian actor whose career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at the age of 88. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP , File)

FILE – Actor Donald Sutherland appears at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California on October 13, 2017. Sutherland, the towering Canadian actor whose career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at 88. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE – Actor Donald Sutherland appears at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California on October 13, 2017. Sutherland, the towering Canadian actor whose career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at 88. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE – Actor Donald Sutherland poses at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles on Oct. 16, 2001. Sutherland, the towering Canadian actor whose career spanned from “MASH” to “The Hunger Games,” has died at the age of 88. (AP Photo/Rene Macura, file)