LONG POND — He once executed a colleague just to protect his cover. He has dodged terrorists at every turn.
But don’t bother to ask Jack Bauer to go with you to watch a horror movie.
Well, OK, maybe Jack Bauer. But Kiefer Sutherland? He won’t be much fun.
“I can’t watch a scary film. I’m awful at it,” Sutherland admitted to the press Sunday while visiting the NASCAR race at Pocono International Raceway, where his latest movie (yes, a thriller), “Mirrors’’ was a sponsor on the race car driven by J.J. Yeley.
“I took my daughter (Sarah), when she was 9, to see ‘Finding Nemo’ and there is this part in (the movie), which is G-rated, where the shark sticks his head in the boat and the (scary) music cue goes up and literally I lost my popcorn,” Sutherland recalled.
“It freaked me out. And my 9-year-old daughter looked at me and went, ‘Oh, Dad.’”
He conceded that in real life he is the antithesis of most of his characters. Making a thriller — a lot of fun. Watching one — “There is no joy in it.” But Sutherland is grateful that there is a vast audience out there that does love his kind of films.
During the production, he gets the sense that he and the cast are creating something which will give them the thrill they are seeking.
He said that during the filming of “Mirrors,” which opens Aug. 15, he and director Alexandra Aja knew they were making just that type of movie.
“We would have moments where we would be doing a part and we would go ‘this is going to freak them out’ and we would know that and there was a great joy in it. We got excited because we knew there was going to be a cause and effect for an audience.”
The latest film stars Sutherland as ex-cop Ben Carson, who is trying to put his life back together after a divorce and takes a job as a night watchman at a department store. The store has just reopened after a fire and soon Carson and his family are terrorized by people living inside the store’s mirrors.
“Oh gosh, we had a lot of fun doing it. It’s a really good film. ‘Mirrors’ is a scary film. If that’s not what you are into, please don’t go see it, because it will freak you out. For people that want to see that kind of a film, they’re going to dig it,” he said.
Since last season’s “24” was postponed until later this year because a writers’s strike halted production, Sutherland did experience some cross-over where he was filming both the television show and the movie. The next season of the Fox series, which stars Sutherland as rogue federal agent Bauer charged with saving the country from terrorists, will begin in the fall. It will be Sutherland’s eighth year with the highly successful suspense drama, for which the 41-year-old son of Hollywood icon Donald Sutherland, is extremely grateful.
“‘24’ was a gift of a lifetime,” Sutherland said. “In the first and second year of ‘24,’ I kept reading articles (that said I was) back from the dead...and no one realizes their career is that far gone until they start reading stuff like that. They don’t realize what a gift something is until they have it. And ‘24’ was certainly that for me,” he said. “It’s been a blessing. I’ve been making it for seven and a half years and it has never changed. It is one of the most amazing crews.”
To those who have criticized the show for taking political sides, Sutherland strongly disagrees.
“Jack Bauer is the most apolitical character of all time. He’s not right. He’s not left. He’s just trying to get a simple job done, or a complicated one. One of the things I loved about the show was that people would project their politics, but as long as we don’t, we’re fine — and we don’t.” He appreciates that the audience will try to read politics into it one way or the other, “but I want to make it clear that our show is really neutral.”
He has met Cindy McCain, wife of presumed Republican presidential candidate John McCain, including once at Sunday’s race, and John McCain has been on the set of the show. And, former present Bill Clinton has said it is his favorite television show.
“That’s what I love about our show,” he said.
As much as Sutherland loves to do suspense, one genre remains missing from his recent resume.
Sutherland was asked Sunday if there is another western in his immediate future.
“You just broke my heart there,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be cool.” Sutherland, who spent a few years competing on the professional rodeo circuit and starred in 1988’s “Young Guns’’ and the sequel, would like nothing more than to do another one.
“You won’t find another actor that wants to do a western more badly than I do,” he said. “If you can convince a studio that people want to see them, but unfortunately, a couple of westerns that came out, and they were pretty big-budget things, were not successful, so it’s making them harder to (sell to a studio).” He added, “One day, yes, it will happen” and then added with a smile, “And I hope I’m in it.” And most of Sutherland’s fans would agree.
Entertainment
Kiefer Sutherland speaks at Pocono Raceway
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