Entertainment
I wish he helped Kiefer more
Hunger Games star Donald Sutherland died deeply distraught because he had not done more to help his actor son Kiefer as he desperately battled the twin demons of drugs and alcohol, insiders claimed.
Sutherland died on June 20 at the age of 88 after a long illness RadarOnline.com reported.
“Donald died regretting the fact that his physical life with Kiefer was non-existent for years,” a source told us. “He loved his son, but mostly from a distance, and he wished he had helped him when he really needed it most.”
The skinny, thrice-married 6-foot-1 Dirty dozen star once admitted: “With Kiefer I don’t see him enough.”
Kiefer was Donald’s son from his brief second marriage to the late actress Shirley Douglasfrom whom he divorced in 1970.
Two years ago, Kiefer, now 57 and the star of the TV spy series, 24, admitted: ‘I do love him. Because I grew up with my mother, there is a kind of distance between us. But I want to impress him. I want him to be proud of me.”
And Donald was extremely proud of his son when they shot the 2015 western To leave.
But the Klute actor was haunted by his inability to help Kiefer when he nearly destroyed himself with booze. In 2007, a drunken Kiefer even tackled a Christmas tree in the lobby of a Texas hotel.
That same year, he was sentenced to 48 days in jail for driving under the influence and breaking probation for a 2004 DUI arrest.
Ironically, Donald admitted, “I didn’t smoke dope, I just drank whiskey and I didn’t get drunk. I never did anything on set that could have affected the work.”
As this outlet reported, Kiefer announced his father’s death in an emotional social media post.
“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” Kiefer wrote in the X-post. “Personally, I think he is one of the most important actors in film history. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and you can never ask for more than that. ” life well lived.”
