Before he made it on stage or in film, Donald Sutherland got his start in local radio
CTV
Donald Sutherland, who died at the age of 88, will be remembered for his prodigious acting talent. But as film critic Richard Crouse notes, a lesser known yet inspiring part of Sutherland's career is the time he spent at a local radio station in Nova Scotia.
The passing of Donald Sutherland will be accompanied by well-deserved tributes saluting his prodigious acting talent, his seven-decade career and his ability, as son Kiefer said, to never be "daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly."
It will be noted that his versatility as an actor is almost unparalleled.
He played everything from a hippie tank commander in "Kelly's Heroes" and "The Hunger Games'" tyrannical President Snow to the Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova in "Federico Fellini's Casanova" and a pyromaniac in the firefighter thriller "Backdraft."
And that just scratches the surface. He was a leading man and a character actor, gifted in both drama and comedy, who leaves behind a legacy of hundreds of television shows, movies and stage plays.
Lesser known is his work as a radio announcer. I mention it because, while it may not rate a line on his IMDB bio, it's the part of his career that taught me an all-important lesson and still inspires me.
Born in Saint John, N.B., Sutherland moved to Bridgewater, N.S., at age 12. The town's radio station, CKBW, broadcast up and down the province's South Shore, and as a teen Sutherland listened and learned. At age 15, he decided he wanted to be one of those voices that spilled out of the radio. Trouble was, no one at the station was interested in this teenager with a deep, distinctive voice.
But that didn't stop him.
