Kiefer Sutherland

Kiefer Sutherland: (admitting he ruined the release of his own action figure) ... They sent it to me for my approval. We took the doll out for a night ... We started torturing him around 11pm and by 2am we set him on fire in the parking lot. We got up the next day and there was just this puddle of wax. His clothes didn't burn, which I thought was pretty cool. Then I got a call the next day saying, 'Did you like the doll?' I said, 'Yeah, it was great.' And they said, 'Well OK, good, you've got to send it back to us because that was a prototype. It took the guy a year to make it.' I said, 'Well, let me look for it, I think I left it in the trailer.' This went on for about a week and then I had to just come clean.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his father, Donald Sutherland): There are a lot of mannerisms that we share. It's an aspect of DNA that I find really spooky.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his movies): There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

Kiefer Sutherland (on winning the 2001 Best Actor Golden Globe): My mind went totally blank and my body went numb. It was a very surreal moment....It was a great night. I admit I felt really cocky for about 24 hours, and then I had to go back to work.

Kiefer Sutherland: I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his break up with Julia Roberts): When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, 'Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, 'I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?'

Kiefer Sutherland (on his career in the 1990s): You could say I was not on everybody's first list to do the bigger films. Luckily other opportunities have come along.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his reaction to winning a Golden Globe Award): Now I know how Charlie Sheen feels, I've lost all feeling in my lower half.

Kiefer Sutherland (at the 2006 Emmy awards): It's surprisingly humbling, especially when you look at all the other actors in my category.

Kiefer Sutherland (on the demanding work hours for 24): Yeah. I ran into Matthew Perry recently and he was teasing me - we used to play hockey together, so we're old pals. On Friends, they work like four days a week - half days at that. He was joking about my schedule, which is 10 months a year opposed to the standard 8, and we shoot for 12 to 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus prep work on the weekends. Towards the end of last year, we were into hard nights: 5 P.M. until 5 A.M.

Kiefer Sutherland: I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.

Kiefer Sutherland: I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his best celebrity Hockey game): I got two assists for Phil Esposito in a game a couple of years ago. He hadn't put on skates in like 10 years and scored three goals in the first 10 mintues. Wayne Gretzky was coaching us, and when I came off the ice after a goal he was looking at me with his mouth wide open.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his efforts to keep improving as a musician): I try to take as many lessons as possible, because I think it helps me move forward as a player, instead of picking the same terrible thing over and over.

Kiefer Sutherland (on music): It really dictates a lot about my life, how I view things and feel things. My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.

Kiefer Sutherland (on Ironworks and its location): Even as people have found success in what they're doing, they've ended up staying because there's such a fantastic community here, and it's lent a great kind of vibe to the studio.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his record studio, Ironworks): Jude and I built it together, and it was really to start a label that was going to help young artists that might not be able to find their way in what is becoming a very shrinking corporate music industry and try and make records for them, and either get them out independently or actually use the distribution apparatus of a major.

Kiefer Sutherland: I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character.

Kiefer Sutherland: I did drugs when I was 18, before Sarah was born. I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it and then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

Kiefer Sutherland: It's funny--after working with the kind of urgency that we did on the movie Phone Booth and that we do on 24, it was a huge gear shift for me to do Taking Lives, which was a big production with Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. I remember standing around going, 'God, these people move slow!'

Kiefer Sutherland: When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies, so there are going to be mistakes along the way, but I am incredibly surprised by how many things work well as a result of working at that pace.

Kiefer Sutherland: When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working--certainly not on anything I liked, anyway--and I started to do other things.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his first film Bay Boy): Yes. We shot the film in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and I will never forget checking into the Holiday Inn. I was 16 years old, unpacking my stuff, and I caught myself walking by the mirror, and I went, 'We've done it!' And then everyone in the cast went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. When we got the fortune cookies, I opened mine and it said 'Go home!' It was like some message from God that I was supposed to go back home and do something else with my life.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his daughter, Sarah Sutherland): She is actually a very talented young actor. Though it took me a while to deal with that fact. I can't figure out whether it's my own ego that's saying, 'This is what I do' or if it's a parental fear of 'Please, baby, you don't want to do this; there's nothing but heartbreak'. At a point, you become much better off supporting someone in their desire, whether you think it's right or wrong. She's good at it, and she enjoys it. If she chooses to become serious about it, I think I would be supportive. I hope I would.

Kiefer Sutherland: It took me a very long time to realize I needed to be a responsible father and make her a major part of my life. I learn new, amazing things about her every day. Once, she made a ceramic cup for me, and I realized she had a grasp of sarcasm when she wrote, 'My daddy is a saint.' Obviously she was joking!

Kiefer Sutherland: I once picked Sarah up from school and swore to myself in the car saying 'Oh my God, I'm such an a**hole.' I looked back and she was in shock. I said 'Oh honey, I'm so sorry, Daddy sometimes swears' And she said, 'You could never be that.' She killed me right there, and she's always been like that. In a weird way we raised each other. But I missed a lot and it takes you a while to realize that you're never gonna make that up.

Kiefer Sutherland (on being a father): I could talk about that forever. From the fear of it, to the joy of it, to the fear of it, to how much it made me laugh, to the fear of it. I was 20 years old when I had a child and I was too young. I remember apologizing to my daughter when she was about 14 and saying, I'm sorry we had to raise each other. She said, 'Dad, it's all right. I wouldn't want it any other way,' and I just lost it outside of Hamburger Hamlet. I was just really lucky. We have always been really close.

Kiefer Sutherland (on marriage): I don't rule it out. And who knows, the third time just might be the charm. I'm really a hopeless romantic at heart - or maybe I'm just hopeless.

Kiefer Sutherland: I think the most attractive thing (in a woman) is a sense of humour. If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way.

Kiefer Sutherland: I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.

Kiefer Sutherland: After ten years, I began not to wear LA so well, I was tired and unhappy with my work. I made films back to back for two years, 14 hours a day, one day off a week, because of this pervasive fear you don't know how long work will last. Whenever you're fortunate it spawns insecurities that it might all end tomorrow. I was also tired of my behaviour. I don't regret any of it except I should I have spent more time with Sarah, my daughter. There are still moments, after a good night out with the fellas, when I think, 'Stop it. You're too old for this.'

Kiefer Sutherland: I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know? There are pictures of him when he was eighteen or nineteen years old. He didn't look like Robert Redford or Paul Newman, the ideal. The idea that he had the effrontery to go to England and pursue that dream, that's an amazing thing.

Kiefer Sutherland: The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

Kiefer Sutherland: She's very smart, very committed and a very tough lady. She was recently awarded the Order of Canada, the highest honor you can receive. My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of.

Kiefer Sutherland: I like chatting with people. If people ask me a direct question, I give them a direct answer and I feel I've always done that with the press.

Kiefer Sutherland (on directing): Directing is an extension of my thoughts of an actor. I couldn't direct a film like Dark City. I don't have the kind of vision that Alex Proyas, or a guy like Steven Spielberg, has. That imaginative, visual scope. They get on a computer and do weirdish sh*t, and I can't even turn a computer on. The things I like to make are very focused, character driven pieces. Ordinary People, that's a film I would like to make.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his work in 2000): I got beaten up badly on Woman Wanted with Holly Hunter. I was re-cut without my permission, distrubutors didn't do what they promised. The result was a mess after a solid year of my life. It's a nasty world out there. The top end of any industry is cutthroat, without honour. People lie straight to your face, with a smile. Los Angeles is like an adult Vegas to me - eventually you lose. You have to know when to walk from the table, and two years ago I did.

Kiefer Sutherland (on playing the role of Jack Bauer in 24): It's funny because I'm strongly opposed to the death penalty, and I don't believe in 'acceptable losses'. It's complicated for me to play this character, because, unlike a film, I don't know the end but I want a situation to arise within the show where he's actually confronted with a lot of the things he's done.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his 24 character, Jack Bauer): One thing that moved me to tears was a news clip of three firemen carrying equipment up the stairs of the World Trade Center. They had a look of determination on their faces that was one of the most honorable things I'd ever seen. That unquestioning dedication to duty is something I would love to instill in this character.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his 24 character, Jack Bauer): One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack — he takes charge.

Kiefer Sutherland: I have watched over the last five years a huge transition - shows like The West Wing, ER and The Sopranos - a lot of programming on television which was better than a lot of the movies I was seeing. It was certainly better than a lot of the movies I was, in fact, making. From that perspective, if you're trying something you think is interesting, new and fresh, the stigma of swapping medium is not nearly what it used to be, certainly when I started. I was very, very lucky.

Kiefer Sutherland (on doing rodeo): I was as shocked as anyone when we won our first rodeo, but I'm a competitive person. I wanted that buckle. But that wasn't the driving force of why I did it. I just really enjoyed the whole process, the discipline and the whole experience. I remembered the great times I had making films. And how lucky I was to have been in that position in the first place.

Kiefer Sutherland (on his early career): My love for horses began with those movies, but during The Three Musketeers I really learned to ride. I needed to take time off, I was doing awful films and I just needed to stop. It's a terrible thing to get into: 'Well, you need the money, your kids have to go to school' - you start justifying it. I was doing really shi**y work, which I only blame myself for, and I needed to stop and figure out what I was doing with my life.

Kiefer Sutherland: I had an incredible desire at a very young age to want to be older than I was. And one of the ways you can accomplish that is to say, 'I'm married, I have kids, I've arrived' But those aren't the right reasons to do that, as we found out. Our marriage didn't last long, but we have a beautiful daughter Sarah, and I'm very fortunate that Camelia and I have ended up remaining friends.

Kiefer Sutherland (on 24): Do I think it's important to the show that Jack eventually dies and does so when you least expect it? Yeah. It will be very obvious when people start going, 'Oh, please. How many bad days can one guy have?'

Kiefer Sutherland: When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.