Kiefer Sutherland, the actor who never stopped arguing with Jack Bauer

Kiefer Sutherland

Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	December 21, 1966 London, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Actor
Known for	Stand by Me, A Few Good Men, Dark City
Awards	Golden Globe · Emmy · SAG Award · Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame · Canada's Walk of Fame · Zurich Film Festival (lifetime achievement)

For the better part of a decade, Kiefer Sutherland was the man television trusted with the clock. Jack Bauer ran out of time every hour and always found a little more, and the role made Sutherland the best-paid actor on the small screen while fixing his face in a permanent squint of emergency. Much of what he has chosen since reads like a long negotiation with that character: a president nobody voted for, a naval captain coming apart on the witness stand, a country singer working through whiskey and regret, a Manhattan priest who settles his accounts with a pistol. Some of those arguments he wins. Offscreen, the headlines keep dragging him back.

He came to acting by inheritance as much as by choice. His parents, Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, were Canadian actors working in England when he and his twin sister, Rachel, arrived at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London. His maternal grandfather was Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan premier widely credited with bringing universal health care to Canada. His parents split when he was small, and he grew up mostly with his mother in Toronto. He told The Sunday Times that he rarely saw his father outside holidays until he left home at fifteen.

Sutherland, born on 21 December 1966, landed his first lead at seventeen in The Bay Boy (1984), a Canadian coming-of-age drama that earned him a Genie Award nomination. Then he moved to Los Angeles, where for three years he shared a place with Robert Downey Jr.

Hollywood cast him first as menace. In Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me (1986) he was Ace Merrill, the switchblade bully who torments four boys on the hunt for a dead body; in Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987) he was David, the bleach-blond leader of a gang of teenage vampires. Young Guns (1988) put him beside Emilio Estevez as the gunman Doc Scurlock, and Schumacher brought him back for Flatliners (1990), as a medical student determined to die long enough to see what lies beyond.

The next decade was busier than it was coherent. He played a junior officer under Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men (1992), Athos in The Three Musketeers (1993) and a stammering psychiatrist in Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998). He directed a crime drama, Truth or Consequences, N.M. (1997), bought a ranch in Montana and spent part of the late 1990s on the rodeo circuit. In Phone Booth (2002), his fourth film for Schumacher, he was barely seen at all: a calm voice on the line, pinning Colin Farrell inside a phone box with a sniper rifle.

Then came 24. From 2001 to 2010, and again in the revival 24: Live Another Day in 2014, Sutherland played Bauer in real time, one hour per episode, one day per season. The series brought him a Golden Globe in 2002, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and, after several nominations, the Primetime Emmy for lead actor in a drama in 2006. That year a contract reported at 40 million dollars for three seasons made him the highest-paid actor in American television. He was also an executive producer, so the character’s choices were partly his to defend.

That defence became the most uncomfortable part of the legacy. In February 2007 Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, West Point’s dean, visited the set to urge the producers to cut back on the torture scenes. Sutherland insisted the show was entertainment and agreed to tell cadets that torturing prisoners is wrong; the argument outlived the series. His own record complicates the image of a man in control. In 2007 he pleaded no contest to drunk driving, his fourth such charge since 1989, and served 48 days in jail in Glendale. In 2009 he surrendered to New York police for head-butting the fashion designer Jack McCollough; he apologised and the charge was dropped. On 12 January 2026 he was arrested in Hollywood on suspicion of making criminal threats after a rideshare driver accused him of assault, and was released the same day on bond. A source close to the investigation told NBC News the confrontation had been verbal. Los Angeles prosecutors sent the case back to police and in March said they were reviewing new evidence; no charges had been filed as of that update.

The work after 24 makes the quieter case for him as an actor. Lars von Trier cast him as the rational, doomed husband in Melancholia (2011); he gave his face and voice to Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; and in the western Forsaken (2015) he finally acted opposite his father. Designated Survivor (2016–2019) turned the Bauer template inside out, making him a mild cabinet secretary who becomes president after an attack wipes out the government. After the spy series Rabbit Hole in 2023, he played Lieutenant Commander Queeg, Humphrey Bogart‘s old role, in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, the final film of William Friedkin, who died before its premiere. Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com called it “one of the best acting turns of his career.” A year later Clint Eastwood cast him in Juror #2.

Music is the other career, and he has not treated it as a hobby. His debut album, Down in a Hole (2016), was co-written with Jude Cole, his partner in the label Ironworks, and that June he played the Grand Ole Opry. The Guardian wrote in 2017 that with him “you have the first Hollywood hobby act unshackled by convention and with a real shot at greatness.” Reckless & Me followed in 2019. His fourth album, Grey, released on 29 May 2026, includes his take on Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down”, and he toured it across Europe, the UK and the US from April into July.

A first marriage, to Camelia Kath, produced his daughter, Sarah, and ended in 1990; his engagement to his Flatliners co-star Julia Roberts was called off days before their planned 1991 wedding; his divorce from his second wife, Kelly Winn, became final in 2008. He has been engaged to the actress Cindy Vela since 2017. Donald Sutherland died in June 2024.

Father Joe, written by Luc Besson and directed by Barthélémy Grossmann, premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September 2026, with Sutherland, who also produced, as a priest in 1990s Manhattan at war with a mob boss played by Al Pacino. TheWrap called it scattershot; Vertical has bought the North American rights for a wide release in 2027. Behind it are Rod Lurie’s western The Horseman, with Barry Pepper, and the thriller Copperhead, alongside Miles Teller and Jason Momoa. The clock is still running.

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Tags: actors, Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, 24, Father Joe, Stand by Me

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