Who Is Kiefer Sutherland? A Brief Introduction:
Kiefer Sutherland (born December 21, 1966, in London, UK) is a British-origin Canadian actor. His film performances—particularly in the portrayal of sinister and malevolent figures—garnered him acclaim, yet his most significant achievement was his role in the TV series 24 (2001–10, 2014).
Kiefer Sutherland is the offspring of Donald Sutherland, a Canadian actor, and Shirley Douglas. He relocated to Canada with his mother and twin sister after his parents’ divorce in 1971. At the age of 15, he left school to follow his acting aspirations. In the film Max Dugan Returns (1983), he appeared for the first time on the big screen together with his father. The next year, he secured the main role in The Bay Boy, which led to a nomination for a Genie Award for Best Actor from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
Later on, he was seen in the well-known movie Stand by Me (1986) as a hardened bully. Kiefer Sutherland’s powerful portrayals soon attracted notice, and he became known for playing villains, even though he actively pursued a diverse array of roles. He appeared in various successful movies, such as The Lost Boys (1987) and Young Guns (1988), which helped to establish his reputation as one of Hollywood’s top young actors.
Kiefer Sutherland appeared alongside Julia Roberts in the 1990 thriller Flatliners. Their subsequent involvement and ultimate split became the stuff of tabloid front pages. He took on the role of director for the TV movie Last Night (1993) and the feature film Truth or Consequences, N.M. (1997), stepping behind the camera. His main focus remained on acting, with noteworthy performances in A Few Good Men (1992), Freeway (1996), and A Time to Kill (1996). He shared the stage with his mother in The Glass Menagerie in 1996.
Kiefer Sutherland returned to Hollywood after taking a brief hiatus from acting to participate in rodeo events. He was cast as U.S. counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer in the groundbreaking TV series 24, where each season comprised 24 episodes that chronicled one day in Bauer’s life, starting in 2001. Each action-packed episode, lasting an hour, took place in real time. Debuting in November 2001, the show was a success both critically and commercially. Kiefer Sutherland won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama in 2002.
He kept making appearances in movies like Taking Lives (2004) and The Sentinel (2006) while working on 24. He took on several roles as a voice actor, including portraying a general in the animated comedy Monsters vs. Aliens (2009), voicing a dog in the comic-strip adaptation Marmaduke (2010), and narrating the thriller Twelve (2010).
Kiefer Sutherland took part in Lars von Trier’s emotional drama Melancholia in 2011 and appeared with John Hurt in The Confession, a series of episodes on the Hulu website. He made his Broadway debut that same year in a revival of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season, which is a drama about a high-school basketball coach and his players reuniting almost two decades later. With the show Touch (2012–13), he made his comeback to network television, portraying a dad of a child with extraordinary powers. He played the role of a businessman on Wall Street in Mira Nair’s 2012 film The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Kiefer Sutherland returned to his role as Jack Bauer in the TV film 24: Redemption (2008) and the one-season series 24: Live Another Day (2014). He reprised his role from Flatliners in the 2017 sequel. He also appeared in the TV series Designated Survivor (2016–19), portraying a minor Cabinet official who becomes President after a lethal assault during the State of the Union address eliminates a large portion of the U.S. government. Although ABC canceled the show in 2018, a third season was released on Netflix the next year.
Sutherland subsequently starred in Rabbit Hole (2023– ), a show focused on corporate espionage. He has also kept working in films, such as the drama Where Is Kyra? (2017), where he portrayed the boyfriend of a financially struggling divorced woman (played by Michelle Pfeiffer).