Donald Sutherland: "'The Hunger Games' could be the most influential American film since I can’t remember"
Surprised to see the sparring partner of Eastwood and Marvin, boundary-pushing leading man and unlikely sex symbol starring in a teen fantasy being called 'the new Twilight?' You're not the only one, Donald Sutherland tells SEVEN magazine.
Shaking hands with Donald Sutherland is like being greeted by the head wizard at a Nordic potions academy. He is 6ft 4in with shoulder-length white hair and a long white beard. The beefy hands grip you firmly while the pale blue eyes inspect you unhurriedly. Up close, he is a dead ringer for Getafix the Druid from Asterix the Gaul. His manner, on the other hand, could not be more different.
“There is no such thing as Chilean sea bass,” he intones decisively. I’m waiting in the doorway of his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, Beverly Hills, while his lunch order is being organised. “The Chilean sea bass is a marketing invention,” he declares in his velvety baritone. “It is in fact the Patagonian toothfish.” I later Google Chilean sea bass and discover he is completely correct.
But then Sutherland’s hallmark, as a veteran actor of some 120 movies, is a majestic kind of old pro, no-frills precision. His fellow Canadian Christopher Plummer may have taken home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year, but one can’t help feeling that Sutherland could – with a rich, juicy lion-in-winter role – do the same. His vast CV takes in a few oddities (Beerfest, The Poky Little Puppy’s First Christmas), but the high points are enduring peaks (MASH, Klute, Ordinary People and, of course, Don’t Look Now). Indeed, no British interview with Donald Sutherland is complete without a discussion of his and Julie Christie’s legendary sex scene in that film. I lasted all of 22 minutes before I brought up my conspiracy theory – but more of that later.
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