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Remembering Donald Sutherland: From Cool in ‘MASH’ to Sexy in ‘Don’t Look Now’ to Tragic in ‘Ordinary People,’ He Was a Chameleon, and the Most Human of Movie Stars


From cool in 'MASH' to sexy in 'Don't Look Now' to tragic in 'Ordinary People,' Donald Sutherland had the audacity of surprise.

The two actors were playing surgeons, which meant that they cared about human life (and saved it every day), but the film’s other message is that when it came to the Army, the war, the United States…they didn’t give a shit. And you can see that at work in one of his greatest performances, in Philip Kaufman’s supremely spooky 1978 remake of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Sutherland, playing the lead role (a San Francisco health inspector), is all warm and menschy good vibes. Even if the movies and shows themselves were sometimes mediocre, you can name your finely sculpted gem of a performance: his Nazi spy who falls in love in “Eye of the Needle,” his mischievous pot-smoking professor in “Animal House,” his lone-insider-who-sees-the-conspiratorial-big-picture Mr. X in “JFK.” And then, of course, there’s the role that defined him, probably for the first time, for a new generation: the svelte menace of his President Snow in the “ Hunger Games ” films.

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