Unfortunately I have no idea as to the source of this article as it was sent to me in a batch of cuttings, but I would assume it to date from 1970/71
DONALD SUTHERLAND - A STAR FOR THE 70's
Look at the pictures of him which advertise Alex in Wonderland. The beard, the beads, the whole hippie aura which surrounds him. He's got a wife who fights for good - or radical, depending on which way an outsider views them - causes. (She'd like to feed all the hungry babies in America, an ambition nobody would argue with, but she's also said to be fairly militant in defense of the Black Panthers, and people aren't nearly so much in agreement about the Panthers as a crusade.) Social change is Donald Sutherland's chief topic of conversation when he's being interviewed. "Yes, I'm an actor," he says. "I may not have the precision or the intellect of an astute political critic, but I am concerned with social change." Like his Klute co-star, Jane Fonda, Sutherland is a passionate anti-war person; like Jane and his wife Shirley he believes "All human beings must be involved in what is going on in the world today. I'm concerned about the times." He's very much a now figure, a pop idol. Not conventionally handsome, he's a hero along the lines of Elliott Gould and Dick Benjamin. But many people who admire him, who know he's a good and well - trained actor (Canadian born, he spent ten years in England in repertory, perfecting his craft) wish he'd stick to his acting, and leave the messages, as Humphrey Bogart used to advise, to the West Union. Not because a man hasn't the right to speak his heart, just that the fashions in movie heroes seem to change so fast, and what happens to a revolutionary hero when the movie-going public, fed to the teeth with blood and gore and significance, (Strawberry Statement, The Revolutionary have bombed at the box office,) turn back to a more romantic product? Straws in the wind there have already been, witness the lines around the block wherever Love Story, that absolutely non-socially-significant tear-jerker about a girl who dies of leukemia, is playing, it's only a step from Love Story (a step up in literary quality, it's true, but still just a step) to Wuthering Heights, and Heathcliff roaming the moors calling for Cathy, and how's Sutherland going to play a star-crossed lover when his beard hangs almost to his shoulders, and is shaggy, to boot? "He presents a rather startling split-image," said one reporter, "half Christ at the Last Supper and half Mick Jagger at Altamont." That's great for Now, but Now has a way of turning into Then before anybody notices, and in the end, it's going to be important for Sutherland to show he's versatile, because he's not about to give up his career and just do good works. He's waited a long time for stardom, and he scoffs at the idea of over-exposure. "This doesn't worry a guy who wasn't seen or known for years." Success is sweet to him - "recognition is as necessary to the actor's ego as the melted butter sauce is to lobster meat" - and he's spent a lot of time making stinkers - Die, Die, My Darling, The Castle of the Living Dead, Dr Terror's House of Horrors, to get where he is today. He wants to direct, as well as act. He wants a continuing career. And in terms of long-range plans, maybe he'd do best to stay a little cool. If you're never in fashion, it's easier not to be out again when the fashion changes.