Tinsel Town<\/a>, a Christmas comedy dripping with self-parody in which he plays a Hollywood action star shanghaied into the Yorkshire Christmas panto scene. His character, Brad Mack, is a showbiz blowhard, whose dormant soft side takes some belligerent prompting \u2013 from his semi-estranged daughter, and a choreographer played by Rebel Wilson \u2013 to emerge. \u201cThe Brits do this kind of movie better than anybody,\u201d says Sutherland. \u201cLike The Full Monty… it\u2019s just that small-town, heartfelt English story.<\/p>\n\u201cThere is always going to be the kind of archetypical impression of a Hollywood actor,\u201d he adds, \u201cand that\u2019s fun to play and lean into. But as funny as all that stuff was, [Mack] becoming a better version of himself through his daughter was something that touched me personally.\u201d Sutherland\u2019s own daughter, Veep actor Sarah Sutherland, was born into his first marriage, with actor-writer Camelia Kath. \u201cYou start to believe, for yourself, that you have an insight worth sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the phone, Sutherland comes across as knowledgeable, sincere, and piquantly opinionated. A panto-based musical comedy was something of a hard leftfield lurch for the actor (\u201cthere were a few people in Los Angeles that were pretty surprised\u201d), but he was drawn to the sheer tea-and-crumpets Britishness of it. Born in London in 1966, Sutherland admits to having a \u201cromantic notion\u201d of the UK \u2013 and it\u2019s one that\u2019s been reciprocated. \u201cAll the times I\u2019ve visited the UK, there\u2019s a part of me that feels like this is where I\u2019m from,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to articulate this, but… people have been really supportive of me here.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very difficult for an audience to latch onto a show that only does eight episodes. Because just at the moment you\u2019re really invested, it stops<\/p>\n
It is also we Brits, he suggests, who were responsible for the success of his golden goose, 24. \u201cThe series took about a year and a half to take off in the United States,\u201d he explains, \u201cwhile it caught fire in the UK almost immediately. Had it not been for the UK, there might very well have not been a season two.\u201d There was, of course, a second season, then another seven seasons (and a film) after that, ossifying the realtime counterterrorism drama as one of TV\u2019s biggest shows.<\/p>\n
Sutherland moved away from Britain as an infant in 1968, when his parents, Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, relocated to California; after their divorce, he lived with his mother in Toronto. What\u2019s always been fascinating, I say, is just how different Sutherland is from his late father as an actor, despite their striking resemblance.<\/p>\n
Donald, the revered star of seminal films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and M*A*S*H, always had a sort of dishevelled charm about him, an innate, only half-suppressed wildness. His son, meanwhile, has always been brittler: whether it\u2019s Jack Bauer or Ace, the menacing hoodlum in Stand by Me, Sutherland\u2019s characters are often men stretched taut by temperament or circumstance. It\u2019s why those people who were eager to fan-cast Sutherland in his late father\u2019s role for the new Hunger Games prequel are so off-base: yes, they look alike, but the vibes could hardly be more distinct.<\/p>\n
![\"Christmas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/98_TinselTown.jpeg\")
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Christmas cracker: Sutherland and Rebel Wilson in \u2018Tinsel Town\u2019 (Sky)<\/p>\n
This, Sutherland suggests, is down to his \u201cmum\u201d (pronounced closer to the English way than the Americanised \u201cmom\u201d), a \u201creally gifted theatre actor\u201d in her own right. \u201cAt a very early age, my twin sister and I would finish school and go to the theatre,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we\u2019d do our homework, my mum would do her performance, and then we\u2019d go home. And so I was exposed to that at a very early age.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t see my dad\u2019s movies when I was a child, because they were always restricted and you could only see them in a theatre. So I didn\u2019t really see any of my father\u2019s work until I was 18, when VHS recordings were becoming available. And by then I already had a pretty strong definition of what I thought good acting was, and what I wanted to aim at \u2013 based on the Canadian theatre actors I watched growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as developing his own style, Sutherland pursued a radically different career path from his father, in terms of the kinds of project he took on \u2013 though not necessarily by choice. \u201cMy dad came up through a time when, in America, the writing was as good as it\u2019s ever going to be in the history of film,\u201d says Sutherland. \u201cWhether it was The Godfather or all those scripts that had been held through the blacklist in the Fifties and Sixties, all of a sudden there was just a wealth of material that exceeded everything else. You had the opportunity to do Casanova, 1900, Don\u2019t Look Now, and Ordinary People. I mean, try and find that material now. Good luck \u2013 you won\u2019t. And he took advantage of those opportunities in an extraordinary way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, there were still opportunities to be found in the decades that followed; for Sutherland, this meant shifting predominantly to television around the turn of the century, having made his name in post-New Wave Hollywood films such as The Lost Boys (1987) and Young Guns (1988). In his father\u2019s era, a decade-long spell on network television would have constituted a stark demotion. But when Kiefer booked 24, big-name stars were just beginning to explore television as an artistically viable alternative. (Martin Sheen, for instance, had signed onto The West Wing just two years prior.) <\/p>\n
![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-71728512.jpeg\")
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Donald and Kiefer Sutherland at the post-Emmys Governor\u2019s Ball in 2006 (Getty)<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never really had a very specific idea of where I want to take my career,\u201d Sutherland admits. \u201cLooking back, there are moments when I wish I had been that guy.\u201d Such as when, I ask? \u201cAlmost from the beginning. I had kids at a very early age. I had responsibilities, and I had to make a lot of choices early on in my career… There was a financial component to those choices, more than I wish there had been. And so, some opportunities, I had to pass on. And I regret that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This aversion to big-picture thinking has continued throughout Sutherland\u2019s career, and while it allows for unexpected diversions into fare such as Tinsel Town \u2013 or his well-received side project as a singer-songwriter \u2013 it proved particularly tricky in the early 2010s, when his stint as Jack Bauer reached its end. \u201cAfter 24, I thought I would just naturally have a bunch of opportunities staring me in the face,\u201d he muses. \u201cBut the truth is, if you don\u2019t create those opportunities, they\u2019re just not there. As someone who likes to work, there have been times when I haven\u2019t worked for a while \u2013 because I didn\u2019t do a lot of the planning that\u2019s required.\u201d It has to be said that he did find new, interesting work after 24 ended, such as Lars von Trier\u2019s Melancholia, or his three-season run as the lead of Netflix\u2019s political thriller Designated Survivor.<\/p>\n
By this point, our phone call is nearly up. I can almost hear the 24-style ticking clock chugging along in the background. I bring up The Pitt \u2013 HBO Max\u2019s ER-esque medical drama, whose real-time premise has spawned ubiquitous comparisons to 24. It is, in many ways, a throwback to a near-extinct model of television production: The Pitt\u2019s first season comprised 15 episodes \u2013 rank profligacy by modern standards \u2013 and it\u2019s set to return for season two just a year later. Does the success of this show, both in ratings and at the Emmys this year, suggest that there\u2019s a wider appetite for more traditional television?<\/p>\n
![\"Bauer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/JAN42835118.jpeg\")
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Bauer necessities: Kiefer Sutherland in \u201824\u2019 (Fox)<\/p>\n
Sutherland thinks for a second. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for an audience to latch onto a show that only does eight episodes,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause just at the moment you\u2019re really invested, it stops. Then you gotta wait a whole year to write eight more and do it again. And in the context of [what TV used to be], that\u2019s not even a full f***in\u2019 season. 24 made 24 episodes a year, and that takes three years for a modern show to do. And it\u2019s the difference between having a serious relationship or an affair. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think people are missing the relationships they had with ER, or 24, or NYPD Blue,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt was something you could rely on. I shaped my Wednesday around this show, and I\u2019m gonna have dinner at this time. It\u2019s something I look forward to. Just like sports fans with Monday Night Football, and they\u2019ve ruined that now, because you need five different streaming services to watch the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
He keeps talking \u2013 and talking. \u201cAnd people want it for free, too,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey used to have it for free. Now, they\u2019ve got a streaming service they\u2019re paying for \u2013 and then they\u2019ve stuck commercials on the streaming service. And you\u2019re paying for it! I mean, it\u2019s really ironic that they basically reinvented television, but they\u2019ve managed to get you to pay for what you used to get for free.\u201d<\/p>\n
If anyone\u2019s qualified to speak on the state of modern television, with all its flaws and contradictions, it\u2019s Kiefer Sutherland, a man who has his own immutable place in the history of it. He may indeed be sliding into 60, but maybe we should all still care what he thinks.<\/p>\n
\u2018Tinsel Town\u2019 is streaming on Sky Cinema and NOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-189706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}