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This article is taken from the British Photoplay movie magazine dated September 1975.. Cover story was Clint Eastwood and an article inside contained an account of the gruelling filming of his new movie 'The Eiger. Sanction'. A special 'Superstar Portrait Special' included such heavyweights as Lee Marvin, Paul Newman, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson, and on the letters page a reader speaks of "surely the best young actor in film-making today" - Al Pacino. However, to keep things in perspective, the magazine also contained a two-page spread on 'Confessions of a Pop Performer'!
DONALD SUTHERLAND - I SAW MY SON BORN!
How many people, if asked, could poinpiont the best day of their lives? Donald Sutherland can, and he says it is revitalising just to hink about it. It was a day last year, during the filming of The Day Of the Locust, but it had nothing to do with the movie. It was the day Donald's son was born.
Twice-married Donald met his current girlfriend, Francine Racette, a tawny-haired French-Canadian actress, after the break-up of his well-publicised friendship with Jane Fonda.
During the filming of Locust, Donald and Francine lived in an enormous Gothic mansion up in Benedict Canyon, near Hollywood, with acres of lawn, an artificial waterfall, a sauna - and absolutely no furniture except the deckchairs and mattresses Donald hurriedly rented hours before they moved in.
From there, he drove Francine to Westpark Hospital in Inglewood, and assisted in the birth of their son.
"It was the most incredible experience" Donald told me, as he sipped oraange juice in his London hotel suite. "When the baby is born only the husband, the mother and a doctor are there. There were none of the usual hospital exigencies. Francine lay on her side and every time she went into a contraction, I massaged her back in the way we had been instructed, checked her breathing, and counted it off until she relaxed. The baby was born in about four hours, and she didn't have a single pill or any pain. Just as he was born, Francine reached down to him and his little hand reached up to her. It was a wonderful moment.
"She had so much energy that she got up and walked down the hall. It was exhausted! We left the hospital three hours later and on the way a cop stopped me for speeding. When he looked in the car and saw Francine and the baby, he asked how old the baby was. He couldn't believe it when I said he was just four hours old. He looked worried, but he sure as hell didn't give me a ticket!"
Donald and Francine have called their baby Roeg, after director Nicholas Roeg with whom Donald made the movie, Don't Look Now.
"He changed my life," Donald explains simply. "Until then I used to push forward my ideas on how a part should be played. I was constantly fighting with Alan Pakula on Klute. I should have known better on M*A*S*H, I should have realised how good Robert Altman was, I was ready for someone to disagree with me, and at that point it came across like a clear bell, Nick was so positive. It was a stand or fall thing, and he stood firm.
What had happened was that Donald realised he didn't want people hanging on to his coat-tails, using him as a bankable name to make 'Donald Sutherland' movies. "I really don't want the responsibility of carrying a film," he says "Films are made by directors, not actors. I would rather participate in their projects."
Before he could put the idea into practice, he had one more commitment. "I had to miss an Antonioni movie because of it," he says ruefully. "I went back into another rat race film, ripped off in every way. They even capitalised on M*A*S*H by changing the title to S*P*Y*S. The director wanted to make a farce not a satire, he wanted me in conflict with Elliott Gould, not together. But he didn't tell us. At one point Elliott threw the script out of the window," he recalls with a grin "They said they would rewrite it, and the day before shooting they gaev us the new script. It was exactly the same - word for word! But that's the last time - I'll never do it again I can avoid it."
Now the gentle Canadian-born actor is beginning to go after the movie roles he wants. He personally contacted John Schlesinger and asked to play the role of Homer Simpson in The Day of the Locust. He gained 40 pounds in weight to look right for the part (I just ate - five times a day!), had his hair cropped really short, and grew a straggly moustache. His performance as the gawky, supressed book-keeper who ultimately cracks and goes berserk is brilliant.
"Homer was what I was when I was 13," Donald says. "I really knew him. It comes from that duality in America of what the advertisements, the Press, the movies, the TV, everything telling you what you should be. Every single value I had then, I thought was wrong. Homer is like that - he lets the world tell him how to live his life ... he lives in a vacuum."
The final scene of the movie where a premiere crowd turns on the crazed Homer were particularly difficult to do. "Crowds are dangerous," Donald says with feeling. "I get frightened somehow that I am going to die. In the part where I was pulled off the car, people had my arms and were going north, others had my legs and were going south. I was really hurt. Afterwards, they got stronger professionals to do it properly.
The next role Donald went chasing after was in the new movie 1900 made in Italy by Bernado Bertolucci, who did Last Tango in Paris. "Bernardo said no to me at first," Donald grins. "The part is a brutal fascist foreman and he wanted Peter Boyle because he thought Peter looked fascist. But Peter didn't want that image. Then he asked for Oliver Reed and then Bruce Dern ... but finally I got to do it."
Working with Bertolucci gave him enormous satisfaction. "Like Schlesinger, he demands everything," he explains. "You put the character together and take it apart, you are mud and paint and collage. The more they ask, the more there is to give. It's the most exhilarating experience."
Donald and his family will be spending the best part of the next year in Italy again while he plays the title role in the new movie about the legendary lover, Casanova. Or as Donald puts it: "Fellini's Casanova" which is a different thing altogether." There will be a special hooked-nose make-up for him, and Donald says he has great sympathy for the character - "He was always temporarily in love!"
Donald admits that, like Spencer Tracy, he still has this sneaking fear every time he finishes a film that he might never work again. He still can't quite come to terms with the fact that women find him sexy. He remembers the moment as a kid when he asked his mother whether he was good-looking. After what seemed an intermnable pause as she searched for an answer that would not crush the impressionable 16-year-old, she replied: "Donald, to be perfectly truthful, no. But your face has a lot of character."