Donald Sutherland: An Appreciation

a fine actor who wore his greatness lightly

AMAZINGLY, the Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who died last month, never received an Oscar nomination - not an Oscar, mark you - a nomination. I don’t count those honorary awards that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives to artists they’ve inexplicably neglected. In my view, awards ceremonies are rarely more than a cringeworthy component of an ecosystem that does very little to promote excellence, or celebrate achievement in any authentic fashion. If an actor of the calibre of Sutherland can slip through their net, their net needs fixing. George C. Scott once dismissed the ceremony as “a beauty contest in a slaughterhouse”,¹ and refused to accept his Best Actor Academy Award for playing the eponymous general in the film Patton in 1971. That was the year that M*A*S*H, one of the movies for which Donald Sutherland is best known and loved, received five nominations. It was one of many performances that the Academy would overlook, taking until 2017 to recognise him with something called an “Academy Honorary Award”. Pah!