Donald Sutherland Explained Why His Marriage to Wife Francine Endured 50 Years

Donald Sutherland was married to wife Francine Racette for more than 50 years when his death was announced on June 20, 2024.

That’s according to People Magazine, which reports that “Hunger Games” star Sutherland married Racette in 1972. She was his third wife and survived him. He was 88 years old when he passed away. The cause of death was not released.

The veteran actor’s famous son, Kiefer Sutherland, announced his dad’s death on Instagram. “With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away. I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad, or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived,” Kiefer Sutherland wrote.

According to People Magazine, Kiefer is one of Donald Sutherland’s five kids. The others are Rachel, Roeg, Rossif, and Angus. Kiefer and Rachel are Sutherland’s kids with his ex-wife Shirley Douglas, People reported. “I named my four sons after directors I worked with,” Donald Sutherland told Variety.

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Donald Sutherland Said His Marriage Endured Because Francine Racette Made Him ‘Laugh All the Time’

According to the Guardian, Racette is a “French-Canadian actress.” People Magazine reported that she “was born in Quebec and grew up in Canada,” speaking French as her first language and appearing in French language films.

They met on the set of “Alien Thunder,” People reported.

The Guardian asked him the secret to having one of Hollywood’s “most enduring marriages.”

“I don’t know,” Donald Sutherland said.

“It’s not something that you can communicate. She’s an extraordinary human. She was courted by intellectuals. Jean-Paul Sartre? She was his actress. She was Frédéric Rossif’s muse,” he said.

Referring to the actress who married Paul Newman, he added, “I think it’s like Joanne Woodward said, ‘Beauty goes and sex goes but my husband makes me laugh every single day.’ And so does my wife. We laugh all the time.”

In 2014, GQ reported, “In the summertime, Donald Sutherland and his wife and their dog live in a large Victorian-ish house ninety minutes east of Montreal.”

He added to GQ, “When people ask me where I live, I say, ‘I live with my wife.’ I don’t know whether I live in Paris, New York, or Miami. I live with my wife. My inspiration, my judgment, it comes from my wife. She has…truth.”

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Donald Sutherland Was Married 3 Times & Romanced Jane Fonda, Who ‘Broke’ His Heart

According to the Guardian, Sutherland was married three times.

He met his first wife, Lois Hardwick, in college, The Guardian reported, adding that she had been “a child star of the silent movies.” They were married for seven years, The Guardian reported.

Douglas, the mother of twins Kiefer and Rachel, was the daughter of a socialist politician named Tommy Douglas, the Guardian reported, describing him as “the architect of Canada’s welfare state.”

He then embarked on a “three-year-long affair with Jane Fonda,” The Guardian reported.

“We got together shortly before we made Klute and then we were together until the relationship exploded and fell apart in Tokyo. And it broke my heart. I was eviscerated. I was so sad. It was a wonderful relationship right up to the point we lived together,” Donald Sutherland told The Guardian of Fonda.

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