Kiefer Sutherland Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I have noticed this in America

more than anywhere else I traveled.

Americans believe, when they watch a movie,

that they're watching the people they're watching,

and they believe that they are those characters.

I've run into people who won't shake my hand

because of a character that I've played.

[upbeat music]

Stand By Me.

In Stand By Me, I got to play Ace Merrill.

All of the characters were so beautifully defined

and Rob Reiner, as a director,

did this amazing thing with the boys,

'cause they were kind of ranging in ages

between kind of 11 and 13.

They would play theater games in the morning,

and then they would shoot only in the afternoon.

To cut your shooting schedule in half is unheard of,

but he got them to such a relaxed place

that the bonds that they started to develop

as friends and as actors was really quite extraordinary.

And so, my character's sole responsibility

was to be a threat to these four kids

that you would fall in love with,

and, and I went for it.

You're dead.

You're gonna have to kill me, Ace.

No problem.

I was, I was 17 years old.

It was the first job I was ever hired,

actually only job I was ever hired for in the office

at the audition, and I will thank Rob Reiner

to the death for that.

It was one of the most extraordinary feelings.

But again, the character was just so well written.

There was no trying to navigate what he was.

He was just, I don't know if you're allowed to say,

but he was an asshole, and as an actor,

you need to lean into that.

We're gonna get you for this.

Maybe you will and maybe you won't.

Oh, we will.

I made great friends.

Casey Siemaszko, who's in that gang,

is still a dear friend of mine.

And John Cusack worked on the early parts of that film,

he and I became friends.

Corey Feldman and I would end up

going to work on Lost Boys together.

River Phoenix, we had a shared interest in the guitar.

We did that, and in fact, I think one of the first songs

I taught him was Stand By Me,

and that was back when the film was called The Body.

I don't know if Rob heard that and heard River playing it

or how that ended up becoming the title of the film,

but it was the first song that I kinda played with River.

[upbeat music]

The Lost Boys.

When I was doing Lost Boys, I got to play David.

He was a much more well rounded bad guy than Ace Merrill was

in Stand By Me.

Ace Merrill was almost a cartoon character,

whereas David becomes friends with the lead actor,

Jason Patric.

David, as a character, is, at least on paper,

supposed to be kind of cool and sexy and has a girlfriend.

Star.

I can't beat your bike.

You don't have to beat me, Michael.

You just have to try and keep up.

Developing that character was a very funny kind of moment

because so much of it was created from a physical point.

The look had to be right, the clothes had to be right,

the hairstyle had to be right,

and Joel Schumacher, as a director,

was very in touch with rock and roll and music,

and wanted that to be an aspect of this film,

wanted it to have that kind of look.

So I think all of us on some level

started to try and live out

kind of whatever rock and roll fantasy we might have.

Joel Schumacher wanted me to have white hair

and I had very long hair at the time,

and he wanted me to keep it,

and I just looked like a bad wrestler.

I looked like a moron.

It was awful.

And I thought Billy Idol was really cool,

and I thought he looked really cool,

and I still think he looks really cool,

and his hair was all spiky and kind of punk up front.

So I got that haircut, but I left enough at the back

so I could tell Joel Schumacher I left it long,

and I think kind of accidentally

might've at least been part of a movement

that created maybe one of the worst hairstyles of all time,

the mullet.

How are those maggots?

[men laughing]

Maggots, Michael.

You're eating maggots.

How do they taste?

And I think Joel was disappointed that I had cut my hair

but we did five films together, so I think he forgave me.

[upbeat music]

24.

When we were doing 24, I had shot the pilot,

and then I went away to do two other films.

I wasn't sitting around waiting

to see if it was gonna get picked up.

If I give you a phone number,

could you hack in and get all the Internet passwords

connected to it?

Sure, if you have a warrant.

And if I didn't have a warrant?

It's important?

It's pretty important.

[keyboard clacking]

And the truth is, it was just different enough

that I thought, It doesn't really have a chance.

The whole idea of everything being filmed in real time,

it'd never been done before.

We didn't know if it was gonna work,

and I would rather stick a yarning needle in my eye

than have to work out some of the logistics

that Howard Gordon and Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran did.

But the truth is, I really liked the character.

There was something so nice about not being the bad guy.

There was something so nice about,

this is the guy you want to win.

Having said that, it was painfully obvious to me

out of the gate that he never would.

He was never gonna win.

The odds were too big and he was just one person.

And so what I found really interesting

in the process of developing that character

over the first season was that there are people in our world

who do jobs that they're never going to succeed at,

and yet we would not be here if it weren't for them.

I fell in love with that guy.

I was just like, I can't say that I'm that guy.

But I absolutely admired the character.

I think all of us felt very strongly

that that terrible day on 9/11,

when our show started to kind of emulate

one of the great tragedies in American history,

I mean, I remember going through weeks

of not wanting to do it anymore,

and I think everybody on the show felt the same way.

It was like, I don't wanna, I don't anything coming close

to representing this awful thing

that I just watched happen.

Having said that, the country felt very differently.

Even if it was just a television show

and a guy fighting back, that's what they wanted,

and that's what we did.

Get these men to back off and holster their weapons!

Back off!

Stand down!

[men shouting]

Get them to holster their weapons now!

Lower your weapon!

I often think about how lucky I am

to have had that opportunity.

I got to work with a cast and crew over nine seasons

that I will consider family to the day I die,

even if I don't get to see them every day like we used to.

I have pictures of my daughter

at the beginning of 24 in grade six.

I have picture of my daughter

at the end of 24 graduating from NYU.

It was a huge part of mine and my family's life,

and I miss it.

It was an incredible experience.

I have learned that you're just better off

not to be definitive about your answer

about whether you will do something or not do something.

I loved playing that character.

I do believe the story is unresolved,

and if something were to be written that made sense to me

and that I thought was going to contribute to the franchise,

then I would be behind it.

And even if my participation in that would be limited,

I thought the series that they went to go do,

I was very excited for all of them for that too.

And my involvement, again, will always be predicated

on what I perceive to be the quality of the writing.

Howard Gordon, who was the showrunner for so many years,

is a fantastic writer, and so if he's motivated

to do something, we'll see what happens.

[upbeat music]

A Few Good Men.

So A Few Good Men was an incredible play,

an incredible script.

Lieutenant Kendrick is the character that I played.

He was an interesting character

because I think when people have limited experience,

they tend to hold onto things very tightly,

and so the Marine Code of Conduct and the Bible

are two things that you can hold on very tightly

and follow to the letter of the law

and still be incredibly wrong,

and that was what I used kind of as my defining moment

for that character, was that he had misinterpreted

both the Bible and the Marine Code of Conduct

in such a way that it led to someone's dying.

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.

The story that I'll always remember from that film

was two of the biggest actors in the world

were in the same movie, Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson,

and Jack Nicholson gives a performance

that's iconic and extraordinary.

But any actor will tell you that Jack Nicholson

can't give that performance if it wasn't for the performance

that Tom Cruise was giving.

It works together, and so the only time I ever saw actors

on a day off come to work was the two of them

squaring off for the You can't handle the truth scene.

You want answers?

I think I'm entitled.

[Colonel Jessup] You want answers?

I want the truth!

You can't handle the truth!

I remember coming in, I had my cup of tea and a bagel

and I sit down somewhere in the courtroom

and I look over and I see Bruce Willis,

who's not even working on the movie,

he's sitting in the gallery.

People were coming from everywhere.

They start and the covers is on Jack Nicholson,

and they do it from top to bottom, the entire scene.

It required a 1200 foot mag,

back in the days where we used film,

and it literally went from end to end,

and he knocked it out of the park.

Not a slight hesitation,

not something, an uncomfortable moment

or trying to kind of dip your toe into the scene

and kinda see if the water's fine.

This guy went for it.

He took a full on Hank Aaron baseball swing

and he knocked it out of the park.

I'd never heard a set that quiet in my life.

All the oxygen had just been sucked out of the room

and no one was moving.

Rob Reiner said, Okay, well let's reload,

and then really quickly, we'll go again.

And Jack smiled and put his head down,

and they did it again.

And the scene was scheduled

for two or three days of filming,

and Rob Reiner said,

Well, it's never gonna get any better than that,

so we wrapped.

Never seen it happen.

And I've also never seen a gallery of cast and crew

give an ovation, and it was to both of them.

And so I was always very proud

to be a part of that group of actors.

[upbeat music]

A Time to Kill.

In A Time to Kill, it was a hard character to play.

It was, again, Joel Schumacher.

At this point, we'd done three films or four films together.

I got a friend, used to be active.

I could give him a call.

You do that, Winston.

You tell them boys we need some clan down here in camp.

I do remember, I got married

just after that film had been finished,

and Forest Whitaker was at my wedding

and was friends with me and my wife.

He had seen that I was in A Time to Kill

and he's like, he shook his head and he's like,

Man, you got balls.

And I was like, Why?

You don't think people will understand it?

And he's like, No.

And he was right.

Resurrect our country from the fires of racial degradation

and to make white people the sole masters

of our nation's destiny.

And I've noticed this in America

more than anywhere else I've traveled.

Americans believe, when they watch a movie,

that they're watching the people they're watching,

and they believe that they are those characters.

Hasn't worked out so well

with some of the characters that I've played.

I've run into people who won't shake my hand

because of a character that I played.

I try to explain to them

that the overall telling of the story, the whole story,

is what's important, not just the one character.

They don't wanna hear it.

I don't apologize for the characters

that I have played over the years

because I feel very strongly

about the reasons I chose to do them.

If you're gonna try and make a movie about racism

and how awful racism is,

then you're gonna have to show it for what it is.

And my character, the character I was asked to play,

was a character that was being used to show you

how horrible, how wrong,

how backward thinking racism is as an idea,

and even more specifically,

the clan throughout the United States.

And I think that there's a huge responsibility

in playing those characters

and playing those characters correctly.

[upbeat music]

Dark City.

Dark City, which was directed by Alex Proyas,

was one of my most favorite experiences that I've ever had,

as a person and as an actor.

I think Alex Proyas is a real visionary.

He wrote the cartoon version of Dark City

when he was 15 years old.

I did that movie at a time

when maybe I wasn't the hottest ticket on the street, right?

My career was kind of in a questionable state at best,

and I met with him in a hotel,

and I remember acting out the part for him in the lobby.

He just wanted to have a drink with me,

but I wasn't gonna let it go.

I was walking out of there with that job,

and, 'cause I really really wanted it.

All I wanted to do in creating the voice

was just the stutter of someone who is so scared.

[Kiefer stuttering]

That couldn't get everything out because they were scared,

that they'd been terribly beaten and terribly abused,

and then somehow still have a spark, a wit.

Trying to convey that in a hotel bar

is not maybe the easiest thing to do,

or maybe the brightest call,

but I think what he got from it

was that I would do anything.

This one is still warm.

What is it?

The recollections of a great lover.

A catalog of conquests.

I loved that character.

I mean, one of the worst hairstyles of all time,

and I wore that hairstyle for four months with pride

for the right to do that part.

[upbeat music]

Designated Survivor.

In Designated Survivor, I played Tom Kirkman.

I have to say that that character

is probably closer to me as a person

than any other character that I've played,

and it's by design.

I think, as we get older,

we become hopefully more comfortably in our skin.

Tom Kirkman as the President was never pretending

that he knew everything or that he was the smartest.

He was thrust in a position out of terrible tragedy,

and all he says is, I'm gonna do my best.

I love that about that character.

Look, we're all trying to navigate this thing called life,

and it's not easy for anyone.

I don't care what you have or what you think.

I felt that there was a humanity in Tom Kirkman

that understood that about all people.

You really think I should step down?

I do.

You may be right.

The look of everything is gonna have an impact.

It's gonna always be much easier to work in a beautiful set

that represents the Oval Office and the White House

than it is to do it with green screen

and sit in a odd, fake chair and all of that stuff.

So your surroundings have a very profound impact,

but at the root of all of it is the writing.

It's gonna be the storylines and the words

that rule the day.

[upbeat music]

The First Lady.

Well, I don't play a lady.

The First Lady is actually one of my favorite projects

that I've ever been a part of.

It chronicles the lives of three First Ladies.

Viola Davis plays Michelle Obama,

Michelle Pfeiffer plays Betty Ford

and Gillian Anderson plays Eleanor Roosevelt,

and I play Franklin Roosevelt to her Eleanor.

And it's told from the perspective of these three women,

it's not told from the men's point of view.

So this is about how they changed

the office of the First Lady in their time,

and how they affected their Presidential husbands.

Is it true that I am not to have a proper job

in your administration?

Will you stop listening to Louie?

Well give me something else to hear.

Fine.

I am not entirely comfortable.

Nobody else is getting two appointments.

I'm not asking for two appointments.

I'll think about it.

I would be asked, when doing Designated Survivor,

who was my favorite American president,

and I would say FDR,

and FDR primarily because he was dealing

with the Great Depression,

he was dealing with the Dust Bowl,

then dealt with World War II.

He had very difficult decisions to make

during his presidency, and this is where I think

Eleanor Roosevelt was so influential,

that she was his moral compass.

Doesn't mean he always followed it,

but she certainly made his life complicated when he didn't.

[Kiefer laughs]

And I think that's a good partnership.

Playing FDR was the first time I had been asked to play

a real character, a person that existed.

For me, I started with the voice,

and the voice was the most important.

His radio address on December 7, 1941

is something that every child has heard in school.

He was a President that spanned four terms.

He died early in his fourth term,

so then the physicality of when he was a younger man

to when he was an older man,

and he changed dynamically because of polio.

All challenges but all really exciting.

I mean, this is the kind of thing

certainly any actor that I know, that I am friends with,

that knows I got to play that character is jealous.

[upbeat music]

The Contractor.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster both did

arguably my favorite film of the decade,

which was Hell or High Water.

I think they're the closest duo that I've seen

that kind of reminds me of Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

Just the way they act together,

the way they interact together is really special.

My character wants A, B, C and D,

and he'll do E and F to get it.

We gave them our minds, our bodies and our spirit,

and they chewed us up and spit us out.

Left us with fear, rage, uncertainty, disillusionment,

a sense of abandonment, betrayal.

And finally, self loathing and guilt,

as if somehow everything that happened to us

was our own goddamn fault.

It's a very sad story where an older person

manipulates a younger person to get what they want.

That's what the audience person

is going to have to challenge themselves with

when they watch that movie.

I don't know anyone who thinks getting old is great,

but there are some serious benefits,

and one of them is that I believe now

I have a sense of security in my thought process

and how I approach storytelling,

in a way that I absolutely did not have

when I was a younger person.

I actually go to work with all of the excitement

a young person might have, but without all of the fear.