Donald Sutherland^†

Producer Ingo Preminger saw him in The Dirty Dozen and cast him as Hawkeye Pierce before Robert Altman even signed on to direct MASH. Altman then tried to get him fired. Preminger refused. MASH cost $3.5 million and grossed $81.6 million, and Variety's Owen Gleiberman later wrote that in 1970, Sutherland was 'the coolest movie star on the planet.' He followed it with Klute and Don't Look Now, and spent the next decade being exactly the kind of movie star that studios didn't know what to do with.

He turned down 2% of Animal House's gross for a flat $35,000 fee. The film made $141 million. He received an Honorary Oscar in 2017, the Academy's way of acknowledging a career it never once nominated during its actual run. For The Hunger Games, he wrote an unsolicited letter to director Gary Ross explaining what President Snow should mean politically. Ross responded by writing new scenes for the character that weren't in the original plan. He didn't retire. He kept working until he died at 88.

He survived polio as a child, which left one leg slightly shorter than the other. He named his son Kiefer after Warren Kiefer, who directed his first film, and another son Roeg after Nicolas Roeg, who directed Don't Look Now. In 1979, he nearly died from meningitis and reportedly had an out-of-body experience. He got his start at 14 as a radio news correspondent in Nova Scotia, which is either a humble origin story or evidence that he was always going to end up performing for an audience.

His son Kiefer called him 'one of the most important actors in the history of film.' Helen Mirren, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and President Joe Biden all issued public statements. Producer Nina Jacobson wrote that 'Snow has fallen and we couldn't be more heartbroken.'