Veteran Canadian actor Donald Sutherland known for roles in M*A*S*H, Klute, The Hunger Games, The Dirty Dozen, Kelly’s Heroes, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Animal House, and Don’t Look Now, has died aged 88 after long illness.  He had 200 film credits including recent roles in Trust, The Undoing, Sutherland’s 1970s resume included a remake of the horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a memorable turn as a pot-smoking professor in the National Lampoon comedy Animal House.

His son, the actor Kiefer Sutherland, said: “With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away. I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film.

“Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”

Sutherland’s co-star in Alan J Pakula’s 1971 thriller, Klute, about a detective whose hunt for a missing person is assisted by a high-priced call girl acted by Jane Fonda.

Sutherland was known for his political activism throughout his career, and protested against the Vietnam war alongside Fonda.

He starred against Julie Christie in director Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, a 1973 movie that became notorious for the raciness of its sex scenes which had to be trimmed in order to avoid an X rating.

The 6’ 4” tall, Brunswick Sutherland had health issues as child including poiio. He attended the University of Toronto, where he studied engineering before gravitating towards drama and appearing on stage, graduating with degrees in both. Sutherland met his first wife Lois Hardwick in college and the two married in 1959, moved to London, where he found some sage work, and eventually went to Hollywood in the 1960s, where Dirty Dozen and M*A*S*H propelled him on the map. In the mid 1960s he divorced marrying actress Shirley Douglas.