The Hunger Games And MASH Star Donald Sutherland Dead At 88

Legendary actor Donald Sutherland has died at 88, Deadline reports. The cause of death was only described as a "long illness."  The actor is survived by survived by his wife Francine Racette; sons Roeg, Rossif, Angus, and Kiefer Sutherland; daughter Rachel; and four grandchildren.

Famed for his ability and willingness to take on a wide array roles and projects, Sutherland would quite likely have been able to turn his early successes as Vernon L. Pinkley in "The Dirty Dozen," Oddball in "Kelly's Heroes" and Hawkeye in the 1970 "M*A*S*H*" movie into a lifetime of playing curious military figures. Instead, he opted to go all in with his profession. Over the years, he amassed a deeply impressive résumé that ranges from the great seducer Giacomo Casanova in the legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini's "Fellini's Casanova," to the villainous President Coriolanus Snow in the "Hunger Games" film series. 

As the family, friends, colleagues, and fans of the great man grieve the loss, it's time to take a moment to remember Sutherland's amazing life and career.

Donald Sutherland was such a wonderful actor that he barely even found it a challenge. "I haven't found anything hard about being an actor except rejection," he once said. "And I don't even find that so hard" (via Esquire). Curiously, his mastery of the craft only manifested by chance. Sutherland was born in 1935, and was a sickly child who harbored dreams of becoming a sculptor. Though his parents tried to guide him toward a more traditional career path, he ended up taking a tiny role in a student stage play in his first year — and, as a result, he picked up drama studies along with his engineering ones. As you can possibly guess, drama won. 

Sutherland broke into movies during the early 1960s, and after some initial difficulties, his versatility made sure that after 1967's "The Dirty Dozen," he was rarely short of work ... and never, ever short of work ethic, whether he appeared in a small-scale arthouse darling or a mega-budget blockbuster. Over the decades, he became one of Canada's most beloved and recognizable thespians, to the point that he was among the precious few who were selected to carry the Olympic flag in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (per Fox Sports). 

Sutherland continued to work well into his 80s, appearing in prominent roles in major series like the FX's Getty family drama "Trust," and HBO's psychological thriller miniseries "The Undoing." "It's ludicrous, with the way our life span works, that people retire before seventy or seventy-five," he said.