24 star Kiefer Sutherland still in action, with ibuprofen lending a helping hand
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British-Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland at a photo call for Father Joe at the 83rd annual Venice International Film Festival in Italy on Sept 5.
PHOTO: EPA
- Kiefer Sutherland, now 60, continues acting in action films with help from anti-inflammatories and body braces to manage physical demands.
- He stars in the film Father Joe, playing a priest fighting crime, and learned new fighting techniques during filming.
- Sutherland reflects on career ups and downs, saying confidence helps him handle dry spells and the fear of losing his passion.
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VENICE – Action films are still the name of the game for Kiefer Sutherland, but the 60-year-old star of television series 24 now gets a little help from anti-inflammatories and body braces.
Sutherland – in Venice for the premiere of his new film Father Joe, where he shares the limelight with American actor Al Pacino – said on Sept 5 that some things had changed in the 2½ decades since 24 first aired on television.
The political thriller about US counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer ran from 2001 to 2010, with a revival and finale in 2014.
“I do remember the days when I could run around on 24 and I could do it for 12 hours straight,” he said.
“And now I’ve got this brace going on, I’ve got that brace going on, I’ve got whatever else, you know, these pads and these.
“And so there’s a lot of anti-inflammatory medicine used now that wasn’t used 20 years ago,” he joked.
In the film, directed by Barthelemy Grossmann from a screenplay by Luc Besson, Sutherland plays a gun-wielding New York priest seeking justice. Pacino plays a mob boss.
“I don’t get a lot of opportunities to do a fantasy, which this film is. It lives in its own world. It’s good versus evil. It’s broad strokes,” the actor told a press conference on Sept 5.
Sutherland said he had to master a different style of fighting from what he was used to in the film, and learnt a lot during the process.
“And I only got hurt twice,” he added.
On the vicissitudes of his career, the Canadian-British actor said that at age 60, he worries less about the inevitable dry spells.
“It’s going to go down. Then it’s going to go back up,” he said.
“And I think that just when you’re down, the confidence that it’s going to go back up – because it always does, you know – is like, ‘Oh!’ You don’t need to worry as much.”
A rough patch came at about age 27, when he did not work for a few years.
“I was panicked that it was over. And that really messes with your head,” he said.
“If it’s the thing you love doing and it’s the thing you want to do the most, and it’s the thing you care about the most, the feeling that someone can take that away from you is real. And it’s very frightening,” he added. “And so every time it has kind of gone back up, the relief is significant.”
Sutherland last appeared in the 2025 British holiday film Tinsel Town. AFP
