Rossif Sutherland
Rossif Sutherland is an actor, born 1978.
Being a Sutherland is either a door or a shadow, and Rossif Sutherland has mostly worked where it is neither. Born Rossif Racette-Sutherland in Vancouver in 1978, son of Donald Sutherland, brother of Angus and Roeg and half-brother of Kiefer, he built his career largely inside the Canadian industry and in both of its languages, which is a harder and far less glamorous path than the surname would have made available.
He took an early Hollywood credit as Francois Dontelle in Timeline in 2003 and a run on ER, then went home. The Canadian record is deep: Nostradamus in Reign, Tim Doman in Copper, a role in the Quebec prison series Unite 9, a French police detective in Crossing Lines, Jean-Guy Beauvoir in Three Pines, Ryan in the Afghanistan war film Hyena Road, and by 2024 the lead as Karl Alberg in Murder in a Small Town, adapted from L. R. Wright's Alberg and Cassandra novels.
What he is good at is a stillness that reads as danger or as decency depending on how the shot is framed, and directors have used both. Brandon Cronenberg cast him as Michael Vos in Possessor. He played the real Bobby Joe Long in Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey, and the restraint is what makes that performance work rather than any showiness. He was also Allen Albright in Orphan: First Kill, which is probably the widest audience he has had.
Movies (15)
- Keeper (2025)
- Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey (2018)
- Orphan: First Kill (2022)
- Timeline (2003)
- Possessor (2020)
- Hyena Road (2015)
- Trench 11 (2017)
- A Call to Spy (2020)
- Edge of Winter (2016)
- Backstabbing for Beginners (2018)
- Stellar (2022)
- The Retreat (2021)
- I'm Reed Fish (2007)
- Red Doors (2005)
- Dead Before Dawn (2012)
TV (10)
Where to start with Rossif Sutherland
Watch Possessor first. Brandon Cronenberg's film is cold, precise body horror, and Sutherland's Michael Vos has to stay plausible as an ordinary man inside an impossible situation for any of it to hold. He does.
For television, Three Pines is the best use of him, a Quebec-set crime series where he plays the second detective and quietly carries most of the emotional weight, and Murder in a Small Town is the 2024 series that finally handed him a lead, adapted from L. R. Wright's novels and pleasantly unhurried.
Then by taste. Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey is the toughest watch here and his most disciplined performance. Hyena Road is the big Canadian war picture. Reign gives him Nostradamus in a historical soap far sillier and more fun than it sounds. Orphan: First Kill is the one your friends have seen, and going in cold is strongly advised.