A month after the death of Hollywood legend Donald Sutherland, his son Kiefer has expressed his bitter regret that the acting duo did not spend more time together.
Kiefer, best known for his roles in 24 and The Lost Boys, was born in 1966 to Donald and his wife Shirley Douglas.
When he was just three, his parents divorced, and contact with his father was sporadic.
In a moving new interview, the younger Sutherland, 57, said: ‘The only thing that my father and I have been sorry for is that we didn’t spend more time together.
‘Our biggest frustration was that our lives took us in different directions, and that we didn’t spend as much time together as we would have liked.’
A month after the death of Hollywood legend Donald Sutherland, his son Kiefer has expressed his bitter regret that the acting duo did not spend more time together
Donald, who had almost 200 film credits to his name including The Hunger Games and Don’t Look Now, died in June, aged 88.
Kiefer said they had ‘wonderful’ times together, adding: ‘We’ve never had an issue with each other. So when I was a young boy, I was never upset or cross with him.’
Despite being two of Hollywood’s most sought after actors, the pair only acted together on three occasions.
In Mac Dugan’s Returns in 1983, A Time To Kill in 1996, and then finally in the 2015 western Forsaken, when the pair played a father-son relationship on screen for the first time.
Speaking to BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, Kiefer spoke movingly about his experience of sharing the Foresaken set with his dad for such a prolonged period.
He said: ‘I remember both of us realizing that we had not spent three months together at any given moment for a very long time, since I was maybe a child and came to visit for summer.’
It was while filming that Kiefer was so overwhelmed by his father’s talents that he missed his cue.
The Canadian actor said: ‘We were shooting a scene and I got so involved in what he was doing, watching him work, and he did this beautiful monologue, and then there was just this long pause.
When he was just three, his parents divorced, and contact with his father was sporadic
‘I was like, ‘oh, no, I was supposed to say something’. I just gotten caught as an actor. I got caught watching another actor work.’
Kiefer, who is also a musician and is currently touring the UK, has said being in the country has helped him grieve.
‘The BBC has played a number of his films over the last three weeks,’ he said. ‘I’ve stayed on the channel to watch them and there is a connection to that, that is helpful and nice.’
It wasn’t until Kiefer had moved to California aged 17, that he discovered his father’s back catalogue of movies and spent a whole day watching five of his best known flicks including M*A*S*H, Ordinary People, and Start the Revolution without Me.
He said: ‘I was just so amazed by how distinct and specific every character was, but then how diversified they were.
‘I felt like such a horrible son. I felt like how did I not know this about him until now? And I phoned him and told him how sorry I was that I hadn’t seen these things. And he was laughing.’
During the touching interview, he also recalled light-hearted moments with Sutherland senior who he said had a ‘signature voice’.
In a moving new interview, the younger Sutherland said: ‘The only thing that my father and I have been sorry for is that we didn’t spend more time together’
This was an asset the pair shared, and when Kiefer found out about his father’s lucrative voiceover work, he told him: ‘I’m gonna call up tomorrow, and I’m gonna tell them that I could do a good Donald Sutherland’s voice for half the money.’
The interview features on a special episode of Sound of Cinema. The programme will look back at Donald Sutherland’s life through the soundtracks of his major films.
It includes music from The Hunger Games, Don’t Look Now, Six Degrees of Separation and Pride and Prejudice.
It is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 4pm on Saturday 20th July.
