Isn't it funny? You hear a phone ring and it could be anybody. But, a ringing phone has to be answered doesn't it?
— Kiefer Sutherland
The most profound Kiefer Sutherland quotes that are new and everybody is talking about
I like chatting with people. If people ask me a direct question, I give them a direct answer and I feel I've always done that with the press.
There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better.
I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.
My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to.
It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.
I think the most attractive thing is a sense of humour.
If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way.
I've had some amazing people in my life.
Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know?
Were kind of in our own cocoon making it.
Every once in a while you stick your head up for a second, and you just cant believe how successful the show has become.
I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set.
Romania is an interesting place because I think it has been abused, on so many different levels.
Some days I'm in better control and can navigate my way through stuff, and other days, not so much.
There are two things that Jack Bauer never does. Show mercy, and go to the bathroom.
I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen.
The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.
I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.
If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show we've got a really big problem.
When I wasn't the flavor of the week or month or day, those were hard times.
The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous.
I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast.
I couldn't see my father's films because they were restricted and we didn't have videos or DVDs back then.
My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of.
When I saw Virginia Woolf, somewhere between the first and second acts, someone I had known as my mother became somebody else.
What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.
There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away.
That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.
I think when you get the opportunity to work with someone like Lars Von Trier.
.. I mean, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, just to work with those actors, you take that opportunity when you get it.
I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll.
When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.
I love collecting guitars, even though I can't play well.
My favourite guitarists are Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Paige, and John Mayer.
I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.
Commander I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ and because I do I can say this. Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor. And God was watching.
If you're going to break cinema, film, and movies apart, very rarely to you get the opportunity to even think that you've been a part of cinema.
If you take a look at our natural history, there's always a moment where the young lion wants to challenge the older lion and, inherently, that's going to be problematic, and I don't think we're any different.
Youth is an amazing thing: I think back on when we did The Lost Boys, and I didn't think I could do anything wrong.
I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it.
I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.
My parents not only did it for a living, but they were really good at it.
The father-son thing, that's a separate thing.
This film [Forsaken] was not about that. This was a film about two actors wanting to try and tell a story... and taking advantage of the fact that we looked like a father and son.
There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better.
But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts.
I've done some stupid things. You just have to take responsibility, go, That was embarrassing, and move forward as best you can.
I've wanted to work with my father for 30 years, and I'm really grateful that I finally had the opportunity, and it ended up - the experience and, I believe, the film - better than I could ever have hoped for.
I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.
When I started, with films like 'The Bay Boy' and 'Stand by Me', I look back on those interviews and I'm amazed; there's no mention of my father; it's not even 'son of Donald Sutherland.' I caught a bit of a break in that it never felt like a weight to me.
I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best.
I remember being really grateful that David Lynch had actually even thought of casting me, because I was a huge fan of his.
I think the father-son dynamic is interesting.
I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son.
I've always been shocked that people that I'm actually flying with say, 'Oh, I feel safer on the plane with you.' I'm thinking, 'You must not watch the show because everybody around me gets killed.'
I do believe very strongly that all of us and all of the other things in the context of our planet with Mother Nature, all of these things absolutely have a profound effect.
My mother was an extraordinary theater actor in Canada, and when I would finish school, I would go to the theater. I would do my homework, we would have dinner there, she would do her play, and then me and my sister would go home. So I grew up in it that way.
Some people think it's because '24' was jump-started by what happened on 9/11.
That was never why we made the show. We started production six months prior to 9/11, and we'd already done ten episodes.
I didn't realize that television has gone through immense changes and has become very progressive.
I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult.
I consider myself to be a relatively helpful person, and there's an interesting line when hope starts to become the way you actually mask or hide from what's really happening.
I think one of the things I was most interested in finding out was how differently we approached our work. And my reality was that we didn't approach it very differently at all, which was funny.