Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. This week’s Spotlight Creator is the actor Donald Sutherland:
I’ve admired this Canadian actor since I saw him as Hawkeye Pierce in “M.A.S.H.” He is so good in his roles that he manages to make Academy Award winners out of his co-stars. Jane Fonda won for “Klute”. Mary Tyler Moore and Tim Hutton won for “Ordinary People”. He has never been nominated for an Academy Award. Finally, the Academy gave him a lifetime achievement award.
Donald Sutherland does not have the face you would expect to be in movies. But his talent as an actor is supreme. He never delivers a bad performance. He is always convincing and authentic in those roles he puts on the screen. Like another actor I love, Alec Guinness. And this includes two of my favorite of Sutherland’s 188 credits.
The first is from “Ordinary People”. He is Calvin, the father and husband who possibly loves too much. His performance in that film brought me to tears. It was an amazing performance, yet no Academy Award nomination. That is like Whoopi Goldberg not getting the Best Actress for Celie in “The Color Purple” or Denzel Washington not getting the Best Actor for Malcolm X in “Malcolm X”.
And his role as the Nazi spy in “Eye of the Needle”:
So this week’s applause goes to Donald Sutherland.
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