Donald McNichol Sutherland was born in the coastal city of Saint John, New Brunswick, on July 17, 1935. The second of three children of salesman Frederick Maclay Sutherland and mathematics teacher Dorothy (McNichol) Sutherland, Donald spent his early years in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.
He suffered from a number of illnesses as a child, including hepatitis, rheumatic fever and polio, which left him with one leg shorter than the other. In 1970, while filming “Kelly’s Heroes” in Yugoslavia, he contracted spinal meningitis. “I went into a coma,” he told an interviewer years later, “and they told me that for a few seconds, I was dead.”
Mr. Sutherland attended schools in Bridgewater, where he worked as a disc jockey at a local radio station at age 14. He then attended the University of Toronto, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English in 1956. He dropped out of engineering, a field his father had encouraged him to pursue as a possible choice.
But the acting bug had bitten him. After university, he went on to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but dropped out after a year in favor of real stage work. His apprenticeships were with provincial repertory companies in England, where he got the chance to play minor roles on the London stage and occasionally on British television.
She caught the attention of Italian film producer and director Luciano Ricci, who cast her in the 1964 film “Il Castello dei Morti Vivi” – “Castle of the Living Dead”, directed by Warren Kiefer. This was followed in 1965 by works with simple titles such as “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” and “Die! Die! My Darling!”
“I was always portrayed as an artistic murderous maniac,” Mr. Sutherland told The Guardian in 2005. “But at least I was artistic.” His acting was apparently artistic enough to attract the attention of accomplished filmmakers, and by 1967 he had become one of the “Dirty Dozen.”
