DONALD SUTHERLAND I never expected to still be in demand at 82
LATEST OUTING: In The Leisure Seeker with Dame Helen the exceptions was Don’t Look Now, directed by Nicolas Roeg from a Daphne du Maurier short story. “I was convinced I was going to die making that film,” he says. “I insisted that the director did all the dubbing in advance in case something went wrong.
“All sorts of things happened, like the stunt man refusing to do the drop when I supposedly lost my footing at a great height in a church. He claimed he was not insured.
“So I did the drop myself, despite suffering from vertigo all my life. Perhaps I feared my own death, because of the subject matter of the SETTLED: Donald with third wife Francine film.” (His character thinks he’s having visions of his dead daughter in an afterlife but he’s actually having a premonition of his own death.)
“But every time I got on a bloody boat in Venice there would be a little girl dressed like the daughter who died.”
That fear, it seems, has not quite left him. “Whenever I arrive in Venice on a motor boat from the airport it feels just as eerie, strange and beautiful as ever. I think: ‘Oh dear, what are you doing back here?’”
Don’t Look Now was known for a sex scene between Sutherland and Christie, hotly debated over the years as to whether over from acting.
The controversy was fanned again in 2011 by Peter Bart, former editor of Variety magazine, who insisted he had been on the film set that day and witnessed real love-making.
But director Roeg, now 89, told me: “No, they definitely did not. It’s rather nice that it’s such a myth. It was a case of very good acting and filming in a realistic manner.”
Sutherland went one step further after the Bart claims, issuing a statement saying that it wasn’t true. “None of it,” he said. “Not the sex. Not him witnessing it. From reality took beginning to end there were four people in that room: Nic Roeg, the director of photography Tony Richmond, Julie Christie and me.”
The first time we met in Venice was in 1986 when Sutherland was promoting a little-known film called The Wolf At The Door, based on the life of French artist Paul Gauguin. He had confounded Hollywood – not for the first time – by starring in the low-budget Danish production.
“I was proud of that film and always followed my instincts,” he says. “Those instincts have not always been right. I turned down the role that went to Jon Voight in Deliverance and the lead in Straw Dogs that went to Dustin Hoffman.
“But I always think bad decisions can lead to good things. I met the wonderful woman I have been married to for more than 40 years, which is why I would rather be with my own family any day than working.”
SUTHERLAND has been married to third wife, French actress Francine Racette, 69, since 1972. Their three sons are named after some of Sutherland’s favourite directors. Roeg, 43, was named after Nicolas; Rossif, 38, after the late French director Frederic Rossif and Angus, 35, after Robert Redford – Angus is his middle name – who directed him in the 1980 film Ordinary People.
His most famous acting son, Kiefer, 50, who is a twin with his daughter Rachel, from second wife Shirley Douglas, was named after writer/director Warren Kiefer who directed Donald in his first feature, Castle Of The Living Dead, in 1964.
“I have not found anything hard about being an actor except rejection,” says Sutherland. “The best advice I was ever given was, ‘Don’t forget to be happy.’” The Leisure Seeker will be released in January.