The Times Magazine 47moved to Los Angeles, living for the first
three months in the city in his ’67 Mustang.
“It was so exciting,” he recalls. “California has
a great climate and they have showers at the
beach to rinse off the sand. I remember it so
fondly. I remember the showers being really
cold. But there I was, 17 years old, and I was
making a go of it.”
It was while he was living in his car that
Sutherland was hired by Steven Spielberg to
do a pilot episode of a TV series.
“If you get hired by Spielberg you get to
ride on that for a while,” he says. “And so for
seven months, I kept getting jobs. In that time
I got Stand by Me, At Close Range and The Lost
Boys. Those three films just changed my life.”
He went from living in a car to sharing a
house with three fellow young actors trying
to kick-start their careers: Billy Zane, Sarah
Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr. “I
remember how new and exciting everything
was back then,” he says. “We could afford to
be supportive of each other because one of us
wasn’t taking the work away from everyone
else. It was a really exciting time for all of us.
Our lives were unfolding and happening before
us and it was all really exciting and cool.”
The streak of success continued with
A Few Good Men, Young Guns, Young Guns II,
Flatliners and Bright Lights, Big City, where he
first worked with Michael J Fox. The first time
they met, Sutherland showed him a Canadian
magazine that had Fox on the cover. “I told
him I didn’t want to freak him out or make
him think I was a crazed stalker,” he says.
“I just said, ‘I have this TV guide. I’ve had
it with me for four years. I held on to it for
dear life because you were a Canadian guy
and you were making it in the US. You were
a real inspiration to me.’ ”
They became good friends, even though
Sutherland had also auditioned for the role
of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. “My
life would have changed dramatically,” he says
when I ask if he regretted missing out on the
role. “But I was not right for the part. Michael
was the guy for it.”
Even without Back to the Future, Sutherland
had 11 No 1 films in a row. “There was a
moment when I had the No 1 and No 2 film
in America – Flatliners and Young Guns II,” he
recalls. “That’s about the highest point in my
career. I thought, this is going to be the rest
of my life. My father had been successful
my whole life, so why wouldn’t it last? And
then, like a light switch, it was done, over.”
Sutherland turned 30 and the hits dried up.
“In my thirties the films kept getting further
and further away from home,” he says. “You
find yourself in New Zealand or South Africa
doing a film for no money.”
Sutherland’s love life was also troubled. He
had first got married at 20 to actress Camelia
Kath, with whom he had a daughter, SarahWith Casey Siemaszko and Bradley Gregg in Stand by Me
Awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2008 With his daughter, Sarah, now also an actress, in 2003
With his partner, Cindy Vela, in Los Angeles last year