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Kiefer Sutherland, actor, director (b at London, England, 21 December 1966 as Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland). As the son of iconic Canadian actor Donald Sutherland and actress Shirley Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland's pursuit of an acting career seemed inevitable. Though he made his starring debut at age 18 in the GENIE-AWARD winning The Bay Boy (1984), he has gone on to play a diverse repertoire of character parts in mainstream Hollywood films rather than assuming the mantle of Canadian content champion.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Sutherland ran with the young Hollywood "brat pack," enjoying roles in ensemble pictures like Young Guns (1988) and The Three Musketeers (1993). Throughout his career Sutherland has excelled at portraying charismatic psychopaths, from the juvenile delinquents of Stand By Me (1986) and The Lost Boys (1987), to A Few Good Men (1992) and A Time to Kill (1996). He intimidates, not through physical force, but through craft; his pale eyes and curled lips suggest easy cruelty, whether intelligent or brutish.
Since 1997 Sutherland has branched out as a film director and television actor, finding critical acclaim as Jack Bauer in the groundbreaking series 24 (2001-10). Sutherland starred in the same role in the full-length film, 24: Redemption (2008). His directing choices have been diverse, moving from the violent heist movie Truth or Consequences, NM (1997) to Woman Wanted (1999), an observational drama of great solitude and longing. He lent his voice to the animated The Wild (2006), Monsters vs Aliens (2009) and Marmaduke (2010), and appeared in Melancholia (2011), a science fiction drama about the impending collision of the Earth with another planet. He plays a recurring role in the TV series The Confessor (2011) and stars in the series Touch (2012) as a father desperately trying to build a relationship with his young son, a child with unusual abilities who has been misdiagnosed as autistic.
Kiefer Sutherland was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2005, and in 2007 he was presented with the ACTRA Award of Excellence. Other awards include the Golden Globe and the Emmy, both for his role as Jack Bauer.
