Creative words of wisdom series #7
Donald Sutherland
"I love, love, love my characters. Every single one of them,” says actor Donald Sutherland. “It was Michael Chekhov who introduced me to the people in my head,” he said, recalling his first encounter at age 16 with Chekhov’s book To the Actor. “He was the one who suggested allowing the characters to walk around in your head.” Sutherland says the biggest key to a character is knowing what he loves. “What my character does alone is real important to me. How he gets out of bed, all the physical things that he does and the things that happen in his imagination. So who or what my character loves or what he is fascinated by . . . all of those things are interesting."
At the age of seventy Sutherland has 130 diverse characters in his head including Oddball, the eccentric tank corp sergeant in “Kelly’s Heroes,” Hawkeye, the irreverent, gum-chewing army surgeon in “M.A.S.H.,” the low key and somber detective “Klute,” the shy, sexually repressed Homer Simpson in “Day of the Locust,” the self absorbed Casanova in “Fellini’s Casanova,” the reflective and concerned father, Calvin Garrett, in “Ordinary People,” a cold blooded assassin in the “Eye of the Needle,” a very contained and self-controlled heart surgeon in “Threshold,” a seductively menacing pyromaniac in “Backdraft,” an art dealer in “Six Degrees of Separation,” and the calculating Speaker of the House, Nathan Templeton, in the television series “Commander in Chief.”
Sutherland gained fifty pounds to play the role of Homer Simpson, allowed Fellini to shave his eyebrows and build up his forehead to play Casanova, observed four heart operations with Dr. Denton Cooley in preparation for his role of Dr. Vrain and bleached his eyebrows blond to create a strange ethereal look, engaged in snappy improvisation with Elliot Gould using his own natural brand of humor for Hawkeye, didn’t talk to director Alan Pakula for ten years because the character of Klute was so badly edited and cut, combined a laid back Brooklynese dialect with foppish facial expressions for the character of Oddball, created a controlled mental landscape for assassin Henry Faber and convinced Robert Redford, who had him in mind for the role of the psychiatrist in Ordinary People, that he would be better in the father’s role.
The creation of such an eclectic and stunning cadre of well-defined characters depends on an exceptionally rich imagination, a finely tuned sense of observation and a strong core of courage.
Born on July 17, 1935, in St. John New Brunswick in Canada, Sutherland’s childhood was perfect for developing an individual with an active fantasy life and a keen ability to watch. “I was sick a lot. I had polio, appendicitis, double pneumonia, hepatitis, mastoids, bronchitis and rheumatic fever,” says the actor. Given the amount of time he was ill, Sutherland had abundant opportunities to enrich his imagination. He listened to the radio, read books, played with puppets, perfected magic tricks, and delighted in his mother’s storytelling from Kipling’s Just So Stories. He made up pretend scenarios in a red flannel Devil’s costume his mother made for him. He put on shows in the basement with his brother Freddie and charged a penny for admission.
Facing seven illnesses in childhood could also have played a role in the development of a considerable amount of courage --- courage which gave him the backbone to develop his later career in a nontraditional way. No type-casting for him. “A lot of actors’ careers are vertically organized. They do this role and then they do this role so that the two roles will get them to the next role up the ladder. I didn’t ever do that. Mine was one here and one across there in a lateral way,” says Sutherland. This divergent path has led him to a Genie Award, An Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and the Governor General’s Award. In his words it is “a whole plate of work. And I like it.”
*Material originally collected during six hours of audio taped interviews with Donald Sutherland conducted by Sue Ann Martin and Diana Mady Kelly.
