When Kiefer Sutherland enters the room to sit down with us at the Gibson Garage, he immediately grabs a guitar off the wall and energetically breaks into song, effectively holding a room full of people musically hostage.
Nobody seems to mind, though, such is his charm.
Following five or so minutes of his impromptu performance, the 57-year-old actor is introspective and warm. He goes into almost cinematic detail about his time in the rodeo, his long career, and the importance of living an unexpected life.
He also spoke at great length about his beloved father and fellow acting icon Donald Sutherland, who died aged 88 a short while after our meeting. Kiefer’s comments are particularly touching now, in retrospect.
He broke the news himself on June 20, posting online: ‘With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away. I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film.
‘Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.’
It’s obvious throughout his disarmingly open chat with us that Kiefer sees his father as a bonafide cultural icon.
With pride in his voice, he explains that it wasn’t until later in his life that he understood the significance of his father’s contributions to Hollywood. ‘My dad was a world-famous actor. And I knew that as a young person, but I hadn’t seen any of his films.
‘And that’s because I wasn’t allowed; it wasn’t because my mom and dad broke up. You couldn’t take a 10-year-old into a restricted movie, and all my dad’s movies were restricted.’
The actor recalls a day that changed his life when he was ‘18 or 19’ and watched almost all of his father’s greatest films in one sitting.
Even all these years later he can (almost) remember the exact films: ‘I was staying at a friend’s house and he had this vast, homemade VHS collection. And he had about six of my dad’s films, and I think in two days I watched Fellini’s Casanova, Bertolucci’s 1900, Kelly’s Heroes, M*A*S*H* I think was one of them. And…I’m missing one. It’s a Nic Roeg film, one of my favourite films ever.’
He gives up on remembering the title of Don’t Look Now, continuing: ‘I phoned him up and I said, “I feel really bad. I feel like a bad son.”’ He pauses, recalling the conversation with his father.
‘I said, “Look, I’m just absolutely floored by the diversity of all of these characters. I knew you were famous. You know, I didn’t know how special you were, and how good and I’m really sorry.” And my father said, “Well, how could you know? How could you have seen those films?”’
He stalls again, recalling the actor’s paternal concern and breaks into a grin as he relates what his father asked him next: ‘“Who’s house are you staying at?”’
It’s evident that his famous dad still remains something of an enigma to Kiefer, particularly when it comes to his own name: Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland.
He laughs and says he’s as clueless as the rest of us about why he has as many titles as a regency duke. Counting on his fingers, he says: ‘One is my mother’s mother’s maiden name. George was a really close friend of my dad’s. I never found out who Rufus was. There are some others. So yeah, he’s [his father] never answered the question and my mom didn’t fill out the birth certificate. He did.
‘I know that she wasn’t amused by it,’ he chuckles.
But he certainly wouldn’t credit his famous parents with his success.
When questioned on the topic, he initially acts like he has no idea what ‘nepo baby discourse’ is, replying, ‘I don’t have a computer,’ and letting the silence hang for a long moment.
But despite his supposed lack of internet access, he has considered the issue of nepotism in Hollywood in some depth and is happy to share his thoughts after some nudging.
‘So the part of the argument that I kind of don’t understand is if I look at James and sons, the best carpenters in the business. Yeah, it’s like, no one’s got a problem with his two sons being carpenters because he was a carpenter!’ he looks over to ensure the impact is being adequately felt.
‘It’s what you’re exposed to.’
He does concede: ‘I’m aware of how fortunate I am. I left home at 15 years old and moved to New York and went to theatre school, and I was already working then.’ He adds as an aside: ‘They actually kicked me out of theatre school.’
He is more than happy to admit that he’s been lucky, but also credits his own hard work for his success, as well as the opportunity to hone his craft that 24 gave him.
‘If you want to make it to the Olympics, you train every day. Right? And if you want to develop and really become a better actor you have to work every day. And 24 afforded me that opportunity.
‘I love the character. And I love the show. And I love the people that I got to make it with. So there wasn’t a downside.’
He settles into what is obviously familiar territory: Yes, a reboot of the show is a possibility. Yes, there have been informal discussions. No, he doesn’t think Jack Bauer’s story has been truly concluded.
Then, more cryptically: ‘One of two things is going to have to happen in the show that they didn’t let us do in the last one. So we’ll see what happens if we get to go again.’
But he leaves that dangling, going on to explain that, in some ways, 24 was the most ‘normal’ time in his life.
‘My daughter was 12 when I started 24. And I have a picture of her in a cap and gown from NYU University at the end of the show. So it was a long period of time. But I was home, right? I had the closest thing I’ve ever had to a regular job.’
24 is what Kiefer is best known for, but he began acting long before he got that role, getting his start at the age of 11 in a stage play in Canada that his mother was also starring in: ‘There was a pretty girl there so I liked going to work. I think it was the first thing anyone told me I was really good at so that really resonated with me.’
While acting may have been the first thing Kiefer was good at, it certainly wasn’t the last. Unlike most Hollywood actors who merely have hobbies outside of acting, Kiefer has obsessions. And one of his most all-consuming? The rodeo.
He explains that his popularity as an actor waned in the mid-to-late 90s, following major films like The Lost Boys and Stand By Me. So, instead of settling for worse parts, he did precisely what someone in one of the many country songs he’s written might: He literally joined the rodeo for a decade.
He tosses out rodeo lingo casually, along with references to cowboys with names that are so good they seem made up (‘I was a header. I rodeoed with a guy named Johnny English, who was a fantastic heeler, who was living out in Mexico at the time.’) as he explains how he ended up at the national championship of rodeo in ‘94 and ‘96.
It’s a great story and he knows it; one can almost smell the campfire and hear the coyotes in the distance as he paints a picture of an underdog from Canada hell-bent on earning the respect of his peers. Yeehaw.
‘They kind of made fun of me and called me “Hollywood,”’ he says of the other cowboys he fell in with, ‘because I’m back in the box and all of that.’
He pauses with some dramatic effect: ‘And then I started winning. And they stopped.’
‘It was fantastic.’ he says. ‘Because it taught me two things. I wasn’t limited to doing one thing in my life.’
While the second thing he learned is left somewhere along the winding lanes of memory, he quickly ties the narrative into the whiskey he’s promoting and seemingly spent some portion of the afternoon sampling.
Gesturing to a nearby bottle of Red Bank Whiskey, he explains he wanted to make a ‘product that was Canadian and that was top shelf, to the degree that you can take it all over the world and kind of use it as a reason to brag about Canada. Because Canadians don’t brag about Canada. We’re kind of apologetic oftentimes.’
Possibly overcome by the spirits of the cowboys and classic country stars he emulates, he once again plays an impromptu concert before going back to talking about music, casually leaning on the Gibson now nestled in his lap: ‘I listened to Johnny Cash’s song A Boy Named Sue.
‘There’s a beginning a middle and an end. And so, for the way I wanted to write – which was with a beginning, a middle and an end and I wanted to kind of have an objective story – country music made sense.’
Indeed, spending an hour with Kiefer Sutherland gives one the sense of a person who thinks in beginnings, middles, and ends.
The actor-turned-cowboy-turned-musician-turned-distiller has the rare talent of making all of his exploits seem like part of a larger, grander narrative of which he is somehow both the protagonist and omniscient narrator. His highwayman persona teeters on the brink of absurdity but somehow never tips over that edge.
He projects the same intensity and magnetism that made his most iconic character so watchable and his other roles so iconic – so perhaps we can only be thankful that he didn’t happen to be born the son of a carpenter, and is instead the son of one of the greatest film actors to ever live, and leave it at that.
Kiefer Sutherland has officially unveiled his new whisky to the UK – Red Bank – a premium Canadian whisky, paying tribute to Kiefer’s Canadian roots and love of the spirit. Red Bank Whisky is on sale now at Master of Malt (RRP £45). You can purchase it here.
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