Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Who is Kiefer Sutherland and what are his notable achievements?
Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading creative people choose the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the actor and musician Kiefer Sutherland. the son of Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas.
He first made his mark in the 1980s and 90s with films including Stand By Me, The Lost Boys, Flatliners and A Few Good Men. His television portrayal of federal agent Jack Bauer in the crime series 24 became his signature role and earned him major awards, including an Emmy and a Golden Globe. He later starred in the political drama series Designated Survivor, playing an American president.
alongside his acting, Kiefer Sutherland has also pursued a career as a singer-songwriter, releasing a series of country rock albums and performing live tours. Kiefer Sutherland, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you very much for having me. And welcome back to the city of your birth.
Chapter 2: How did Kiefer Sutherland's upbringing influence his career?
Yes. How much do you identify as a Londoner? You know, a large part. I mean, we are where we came from. And I remember when I was about 17 years old, I was coming through the UK and into Europe to do press for a film that I had done called The Bayboy. And there was a long, long line for people that weren't from the UK. At the passport. At Heathrow.
And so there was a gentleman from customs going through people's passports and he got to mine. And he said, oh, son, you're in the wrong line.
Chapter 3: What role did the UK play in the success of 24?
You belong over here. Because it had said that I was born in London, England. So even that my passport was Canadian, he had moved me to the other line. And I felt... Well, A, I was relieved that I went to the shorter line. But I really felt so welcomed. And he acknowledged that I was British. And so within months, I had my British passport. And over the years, I have felt really cared for here.
So you do have a British passport?
Chapter 4: What was Kiefer Sutherland's experience working on Stand By Me?
Yes, yeah. And what a lovely passport control officer there. It could have gone the other way. Yeah, huge impact on my life. But it's a very funny thing with 24, because 24's success really hinged on its success in the UK. Because in America, it was successful, but it wasn't kind of banging out of the box.
And yet in the UK, it was so successful that it had become understood that we were going to do a second season. And also to finish the first season, because I think we were only picked up for 13 episodes. And halfway through the first season, it then became incredibly successful in the US.
But had it not been for the kind of out-of-the-box success that we had in the UK, 24 wouldn't have maybe survived.
Chapter 5: How did Kiefer Sutherland's father impact his acting career?
And so I've always felt some kind of affinity to the fact that the UK has saved me in a number of waves over the years, and that people have been really supportive of me here. On This Cultural Life, Kiefer Sutherland, my guests choose the most creative influences and experiences. And we start with your parents, who were both Canadian-born actors, Shirley Douglas and Donald Sutherland.
Where did they meet? I believe that they met here in London. My mother went to RADA and my father went to Lambda. And there was never a version of us all sitting around the dinner table talking about when they met. That never happened. But I believe it was here. And I grew up with my mom.
Chapter 6: What are Kiefer Sutherland's thoughts on the ethical dilemmas in 24?
My mother and father divorced when I was about four. And I have a twin sister named Rachel and I have an older brother named Tom. And we all lived in Los Angeles together, left England when I was three. So I didn't see my dad on a regular basis, primarily because of his work schedule. He was finding great success.
And then eventually my mother, political activist against the Vietnam War and equality for women and a number of equal rights issues and had kind of gotten into some trouble with the U.S. Was she supporting the Black Panthers? The Black Panther Party as well. And she ran the breakfast program through the AME Church in Los Angeles. And it was time for us to go.
Chapter 7: How has songwriting provided a new creative outlet for Kiefer Sutherland?
Well, just tell me about your political pedigree. From what I understand, your mother was the daughter of a very famous... In the time that he was alive was probably the most successful health care system in the world. And so you say it was time to leave Los Angeles because it was getting too politically heavy for your mother to be there.
Well, no, my mother had gone to jail on a number of charges that were eventually dropped. But we were being deported as far as I understood. And so so we left for Canada. And that's where I grew up in Toronto. My mother then gets back to Toronto and starts working as an actor again. We're a little older so she doesn't have the burden of two babies.
Chapter 8: What reflections does Kiefer Sutherland share about his parents' influence?
So she now has her career up and running and my father has his. I grew up
in the theater with my mom so my mom would be doing a play at the royal alex and my sister and i would finish school and we would take the subway to the theater we would finish our homework she would do her performance and then we'd go eat and so i was around the people of backstage of that community so the other actors and actresses
I was around the production designer, the costume designer, the, you know, through the rehearsal process. I understood the process from, you know, just workshopping the play in rehearsals and then getting to the theater and doing proper staging rehearsals and then doing the performances. All of this, my sister and I were very aware of by the time we were 10 or 11 years old.
So there was just an incredible education that had been made available to us about how to work in the theater, etc. To the degree that my mother would put me on one side of the theater in the previews and my sister on the other. And we would cue the audience to clap, right? Like she would tell us this line in the second scene. You were plants. Yeah.
We would just sit there and clap and everybody else would start to clap. So I knew at a very early age that these were the kinds of people that I wanted to be around. So it's so to see that you think from an early age, you thought this is the life for me. And I want to follow in my at that point, your mother's footsteps. Yeah. And she had done Virginia Woolf. And this was the clincher.
This was the moment she was working at the National. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? And she was playing Martha, and she was doing it at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Canada, and I'd gone up to see the performance, and I was maybe about 12 now. And somewhere in the first act, she stopped being my mum. She didn't even look like my mom anymore.
Something had happened to me as a viewer where she understood that character so well. And her performance of that character was so special that she just became something different. As if by magic before my eyes. And I remember at the end of the play, one of the ushers found me sitting in the theater by myself. Theater had long been emptied.
And the usher came up and said, Kiefer, your mom's waiting. And I kind of almost in a trance said, I'm so sorry. I'll be right there. And it was a big kind of euphoric moment for me because I thought, oh, my God, that's incredibly powerful.
If you can actually create a character where someone so connected to you like a son or a daughter doesn't even recognize you in the context of that performance, that's That's when I decided that I wanted to kind of go down the path of working as an actor because I knew what to aim for now.
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