Donald Sutherland? Less 'epic' and more classic

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'Epic?" Donald Sutherland asks, waving off the adjective. "No." Then he takes another bite of his croissant before dismissing more words I've thrown at him. "A Hollywood life? No, no. My home is with my wife. I've been married for 42 years, and I don't live in California. I left it because I couldn't stand it there."

Sutherland is reacting to his recent profile in GQ magazine. The feature was intimate and soulful, and focused a lot on the actor's parents and his own family, and yet the lead-in to the article touted his "epic Hollywood life." In fact, the 79-year-old actor splits his time seasonally: summers in the country east of Montreal; winters spent on the southern tip of Miami Beach, where the ocean is a two-minute walk from the apartment he shares with his wife, the French Canadian actress Francine Racette. "We don't swim. We just sit," he says. "It's like a bathtub."

So, a snowbird. What could be more Canadian (and less epic Hollywood) than that?

And what could be more Canadian than making a television movie for CBC? Sutherland was in Toronto to chat up Pirate's Passage, an animated feature based on the William Gilkerson novel, set in 1952's coastal Nova Scotia. It's a Flying Dutchman type story (with a touch of Scooby-Doo caper business) that airs Jan. 4 on CBC.

Lanky, silver-haired and half-smiling devilishly, Sutherland is decked out business-like in a brown suit and tie, but he's relaxed and enthused as he discusses a passion project that he produced, co-wrote, and stars in as the voice of an eternal sea dog, Captain Johnson.

A live-action version of Pirate's Passage would have cost upward of $150-million, he says, when asked "why a cartoon?" Besides, Sutherland didn't want A-list actors, he wanted eh-list. Voices are supplied by homegrowns Paul Gross, Colm Feore, Kim Coates, Carrie-Anne Moss, his son Rossif Sutherland and Gordon Pinsent, who Sutherland knows as Gordie. "I've known him for bloody ages," he says of the veteran Newfoundland actor. "I love him."

The cost of Pirate's Passage ran to a modest $3.75-million, according to Sutherland. But it wasn't just the finances that brought the project home. "I wanted the sensibility of what Canada was in the 1950s," he says. "I wanted it to catch the imagination of Canadians."

I begin to ask him about the process of taking the novel to screen, but Sutherland is distracted, with a look of concerned puzzlement on his face. "I wonder what was meant," he murmurs to himself, his mind lost in an earlier part of our conversation, "by 'epic Hollywood life.'"

Of course, the Saint John native has done Hollywood, and it has been some life. After breaking through in the 1967 U.K.-filmed The Dirty Dozen – he played one of the bottom six soldiers – Sutherland moved from London to California. That is where M*A*S*H, Kelly's Heroes, Klute (and Jane Fonda), National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Ordinary People, Space Cowboys and The Hunger Games happened.

Epic? Perhaps to some. But, as the playwright Victor Hugo wrote, "The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real," and Sutherland's own history is attached to Pirate's Passage. He was 12 when he moved from Saint John to Nova Scotia, where, by the age of 14, he held down a part-time, on-air position at CKBW radio in coastal Bridgewater, a town with similarities to the Pirate's Passage setting of Grey Rocks.

"After I finished my shift each Sunday, I came down the stairs into the parking lot, where I sat in the car and listened to Jake and the Kid on CBC," Sutherland recalls, his mind on an early-fifties radio series, and no longer in Hollywood. "So, that's where I was, and that's why I wanted Pirate's Passage to be on CBC television.

"I wanted it to be part of my journey."

The man is sincere, even a little misty. "Gosh, I love CBC Radio," he says, lost in thought again.

A hovering publicist gives me the two-minute warning sign. I quote a line from Pirate's Passage, spoken by Sutherland's ageless character: "I signed on for centuries. It's my god-given task." In response, Sutherland grins. "I'm not going to be here for centuries."

And, the acting? "I don't know if this was my god-given task," he says. "But it's the only thing I know how to do."

With that, Sutherland wipes his hands of croissant crumbs and unfolds himself from his chair. Standing now, we chat about music after I mention Kris Kristofferson. "I saw him with Waylon Jennings one night," he says. "The two of them were at the Palomino Club in Hollywood, and they were so drunk they were falling off the stage. I had been brought there to hear an unknown singer. Her name was Linda Ronstadt, and I-"

I wished I could have chatted with the man all day.

Epic is, as epic does.