After seeing his father and mother succeed in hollywood, he decided to try it himself He attended local theatre workshops, and, in 1983, his father secured for him a walk-on role in his film Max Dugan Returns. With this small success to his credit, Sutherland decided to drop out of high school to pursue acting full-time. A year later, he landed the lead in the Canadian-produced Bay Boy, starring opposite Liv Ullmann. Bay Boy was such a critical triumph (he garnered Canada's equivalent of an Oscar nomination for his performance) that he decided to test his mettle in the Big Apple. Once there, he promptly slid into unemployment because he was too snobbish to accept roles in lowly fare like soap operas. After a year of no luck, Sutherland hopped in his '67 Ford Mustang, "Lucy," and headed for L.A., where his drought finally ended with a role as the radio operator of a crippled W.W.II bomber in an episode of Steven Spielberg's series Amazing Stories. Sutherland's career began to heat up after his 1986 performance as gang leader Ace Merrill in Rob Reiner's coming-of-age flick Stand by Me. He next played in a vampire cult fave, The Lost Boys, co-starring with Jason Patric, who would later prove a disconcerting thorn in Sutherland's side. On the set of 1987's The Killing Time, Sutherland met Camelia Kath, an actress fourteen years his senior with a daughter just ten years younger than he. Sutherland and Kath married the following year and were soon the proud parents of a second daughter, Sarah Jude. Sutherland's marital happiness coincided with his growing box-office popularity in such eighties flicks as Bright Lights, Big City and Young Guns, which sparked the eventual demise of his young marriage. Apparently, he and the rest of the Young Guns crew shared some raucous times during shooting, and Kath quickly grew shrewish sitting at home caring for an infant while her good-time hubby partied it up with the boys. Their divorce didn't break Sutherland's stride much: in 1990, with five films in release, he was a golden boy with a promising future, and he also commenced a hot-and-heavy relationship with his Flatliners co-star Julia Roberts. After appearing in 1993 remake of The Vanishing, he teamed up with Woody Harrelson in the film, The Cowboy Way. Though his big-screen career has since continued to misfire, Sutherland has launched a promising second career as a television director, and his personal life has definitely taken a turn for the better. In 1993, he managed a bit of revenge against the tabloids when he won both an apology and an undisclosed sum for libel damages from the publication News of the World, which had reported that his marriage to Kath was a publicity stunt. He recently co-starred with his father in A Time To Kill, even if he did have to sneer the whole way through the film to do it; Sutherland will next appear with William Hurt in the thriller Dark City.
