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Jane Fonda Remembers Late Donald Sutherland: ‘Brilliant Actor’ ArticlePure

Jane Fonda is mourning the loss of the “brilliant” and “complex” Donald Sutherland. 

Following Sutherland’s death at age 88 on Thursday, June 20, the Oscar-winning actress posted to Instagram an image of the two of them together on the set of their 1971 hit Klute. The crime drama earned Fonda the first of her two best actress Oscars and starred Sutherland as the titular detective and Fonda as a call girl who helps him in a missing persons case.

Writing that she felt “stunned to hear” her costar had died, Fonda, 86, called him “fascinating.”

“We loved working together,” her caption continued. “In this photo we are on the Klute set with director Alan Pakula. Donald was a brilliant actor and a complex man who shared quite a few adventures with me.”

Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda in 1972.

Richard Nairin/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty


Sutherland and Fonda dated around the time they starred in Klute. Before then, the Dirty Dozen star was married to Lois Hardwick and Shirley Douglas. He is survived by his wife since 1972, Francine Racette, as well as five children and five grandchildren. 

In her tribute, Fonda elaborated on the kinds of adventures she and Sutherland did: the 1971 road show F.T.A., “an anti-Vietnam war tour that performed for 60,000 active duty soldiers, sailors, and marines in Hawaii, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Japan in 1971.” Their performances were the subject of a 1972 documentary, also titled F.T.A.

Sutherland and Fonda went on to star in writer David S. Ward’s crime comedy Steelyard Blues

The Grace and Frankie star concluded her post: “I am heartbroken.”

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Admirers and collaborators of Sutherland’s, including Helen Mirren, Ron Howard , Timothy Hutton, Tom Blyth and Edgar Wright, posted their own remembrances of the late star on social media. His son and fellow actor Kiefer, 57, shared a heartfelt tribute to X (formerly Twitter).

“With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” Kiefer wrote alongside a throwback photo of himself as a child with his dad. “I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly.”

Fonda, who won her second Oscar for 1978’s Coming Home, last appeared in 80 for Brady, Book Club: The Next Chapter and Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me… Now.

Varshil

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