When the late, legendary filmmaker William Friedkin called Kiefer Sutherland to gauge his interest in playing the lead in the Showtime and Paramount+ film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, the actor hung up almost immediately.
But not because he wasn’t interested in working with the director he’d long revered, Sutherland explained. “I thought it was one of my friends making a joke.” During Sutherland’s appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television panel alongside producers Annabelle Dunne and Matt Parker, Sutherland revealed that Friedkin had exerted a powerful influence on his professional path from an early age. “William Freakin was responsible for me,” Sutherland said of his desire to work in film. “I was working as a theater actor – I was only 15, 16 years old in Toronto, Canada.
My mother was a great theater actor. It’s the community I grew up in and I was very dedicated to. That was the actor that I wanted to be.
And I went and saw The French Connection when I was 15. I didn’t know anything about the film, and my response to it was so visceral and the film was so honest and aggressive.
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