Donald Sutherland Quotations

Everything was my fault. I was so dumb. But if I hadn't made the mistakes I made, I wouldn't have met the wonderful woman I've been married to for over 30 years, so I guess that makes the mistakes OK.

No, I'm not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn't persuade them and it cost me everything I had.

At my age, you sort of fart your way into a role.

I have never planned anything. I have been doing this job for over 50 years. I have been paid to work with some wonderful people and it has been a huge gift, to me.

Vietnam was a lie but at least there was a political agenda. It was the domino theory. Iraq is about nothing but George Bush's ego laced with imperialist ambitions. And it was helped by your government.

I had a kind of meandering little career, and then I was given a chance to play one of the bottom six in The Dirty Dozen.

What the nation's built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can't discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticized. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem.

You have a little bit of talent, a certain amount of good fortune and a lot of hard work in pursuit of whatever truth you can find in it, and if you are really lucky, a terrific partner and I have that and those four things worked out for me.

I love grabbing my wife and going to a distant location to film.

I am so glad my wife tolerates me. And we have three wonderful sons.

I don't think I have one iota of cynicism about acting.

I would look a little silly playing Casanova now.

The only thing I feel passionate about is my wife.

But even with no money you could still go to places like the Scotch Club and, you know, John Lennon might be sitting right over there, but I was certainly not a part of any of that circle. I was truly peripheral.

Not too much, though there's a certain amount of rancour and bitterness when someone tries to fire you.

To them though, not to us, we were just a catalyst for their imagination.

I have been able to play a lot of guys and they have kept me working.

But no, I love acting, it's a wonderful job.

Joe Wright called me and I also had some trepidation along those lines but he said no, it would work. He had a very clear and specific idea of what he wanted to do.

I was given this only because I am older than you are, ... And I think that's perfectly fair.

It's a very serious endeavor for me [to play in the same movie with my son]. It's not for a lot of people. It was a wonderful job. I've wanted to do it since I can remember.

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first.

I have no idea. I get involved because I think there's value in the project and because I love the character that is presented to me. I love the opportunity to examine a character, and to have him examine me, live inside me and move my hands. I love that. It's irresistible. It's a drug.

I thought, "Oh, my god, that's what happens every time I talk with a journalist in the middle of shooting and I talk about my character. I describe him, I objectify him, and I kill him." So, I've never spoken with a journalist in the middle of a film. I don't do the EPK until the very end of a film. I can't talk about Kiefer's process, but what he brings to the table is beautiful.

I come from Nova Scotia, and I'd never seen a theater or been inside of a theater. When I was 17, my dad asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I thought I would like to be an actor. I didn't have any idea what it was to be an actor. None. I'd wanted to be either an actor or a sculptor, which are both essentially the same thing. That's how it all started for me.

You're always working in the movie. Never was I me, and never have I been me, nor was he him. We were the two characters. But the character that I was playing was informed by my DNA, looking at him informed by his.

When you look in the eyes of someone and that's what you look into, I knew him with my blood. It's not something you can actually ever get to, I don't think, without that. It was a huge gift, as an actor.

I think we're [me and my son] different. He plans, organizes and intellectualizes more than I do. It wasn't until I worked with Federico Fellini that I understood what my problem was.

Well, I was always cast as an artistic homicidal maniac. But at least I was artistic!

Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth.

He doesn't translate well into our generation.

When you shoot a film, when it was film, there used to be rushes and normally a director would look at them the next day. All directors look at the rushes, except for Fellini. I asked him why he didn't and said, "Because it interrupts my fantasy." What he was trying to say was that he had a three-dimensional, vibrant, living, volatile fantasy going on in his head, and when he looked at rushes, they were two-dimensional and they killed it.

One measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

When the camera starts to roll, there is something of death about it.

We don't have that much time left to do it. I'm 80. I wanted to be Walter Huston to his John Huston. I wanted him to direct me, not in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but something. We'll see. We can't predict anything.

It's the things we love most that destroy us.

I was so disappointed [with movie Forsaken], but maybe I hadn't talked enough with the director. I don't know. But, Kiefer worked it out. Kiefer took it and re-edited it. I don't know whether he talks about that. He's probably more discreet than I am because Jon is a friend of his. Now, it fulfills what I was hoping for, and what we were working on and doing.

I'm running out of time, and a Western is America's answer to a Greek tragedy, so that's what we did. [Kiefer] hired Brad [Mirman] to write the script and he had the ideas, and then he and I did stuff on the script to make it a little cleaner to ourselves. And then, we played it. We were just actors working together, and our DNA must have informed it somehow. Certainly, we came out of it purified a little bit.

I never think of this business as fun. I don't know why. I think I've actually said something about it being fun, but I don't think of it that way. It's not fun, doing it. It's joyful, it's passionate, it's rewarding, it's a pursuit of truth, but I don't think of it as fun. It's not a game.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves ?Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here ?Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change ?

is someone who can own the screen for a few minutes, someone who brings this extraordinary authority, his own smiling madness. See if Donald Sutherland is free!

I had no money at all back then. I was later paid $600 a week for The Dirty Dozen, which was lovely, after having no money for years.

Come on, Mac. We're gonna end up looking silly and ineffectual, and for whom? The lady who couldn't keep her legs together?