Prison, politics just another day in the life of Jack Bauer
By Tom Jicha - TV/Radio Writer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
July 31, 2006

Pasadena, Calif. - Mortal political enemies have become the strangest of bedfellows when it comes to 24. Consider Barbra Streisand and Rush Limbaugh: The icons of the left and right agree on almost nothing, but both love Jack Bauer.

Kiefer Sutherland, Jack's alter ego, thinks the secret is that the Fox thriller gives both sides reason to believe Jack is one of them.

"I remember Joel Surnow, the writer, saying it's really quite amazing to have the right adopt the show the way they have and also have Barbra Streisand and so many others on the left also adopt the show for themselves," Sutherland said. "We've managed to run this neutral political ground while having very strong political aspirations within the context of the show."

Sutherland said there is no disputing that 24 is political. It's just not clearly partisan, allowing people of all persuasions to see what they want.

Jack spent last season thwarting an apparently Republican president -- a ringer for Richard Nixon -- in his conspiracy to ignite a civil war in Russia. The left viewed this as a repudiation of hawks and international adventurists (think neo-cons) on the right.

Jack's tactics, including torture and murder to protect America first and worry about the legal niceties at a less perilous time, are cheered by conservatives. That this approach appalls the American Civil Liberties Union is a bonus.

Sutherland was purposefully coy while doling out morsels of what to expect during the season that starts in January. However, he did allow this would be the most political season yet, without a hint at which side of the aisle will embrace the plot more enthusiastically.

"This year there's a couple of statements that are very political. The writers chose to address a really interesting situation."

When last seen, Jack was on a slow boat to China, abducted to answer charges that he murdered a diplomat during a daring rescue mission at the Chinese consulate. Sutherland wouldn't reveal whether Jack will still be imprisoned in Asia when the story resumes.

24 is renowned for having characters get from place to place at warp speed, even in congested urban settings. However, it would be beyond the realm of credibility for Jack to get back from China within the show's conceit of everything happening in one day. Half the season would have to be played out on a plane. "If I was in China, I'm probably going to stay there for the day," Sutherland said.

He did drop a teaser about a possible solution -- a season unspooling on separate fronts. "Whether there will be two storylines and one's operating from China, I don't want to reveal."

Sutherland is as adept at playing to liberals and conservatives as his writers. One moment he sounds like a hard-line right winger, praising Jack's excesses and the real-life operatives who are doing many of the same things.

"I think we have a lot of people like Jack Bauer. Obviously this is a TV show and it is told in a very fantastical way. But I think that in every law enforcement agency in the United States and in the special forces we have men and women who do a lot of the work, incredibly hard work, combined in this one character. We hear about things that happen. Luckily, we do not hear about so many things that have not happened as a result of these people's work."

The audience embraces Jack's excesses, Sutherland feels, because of a perception that right and justice don't prevail as often as they should. "He does a very unique thing that I think people are appreciating. He cuts through bureaucracy and gets to the point. How many times in a public trial have we seen what seems to be obvious get turned around, convoluted and derailed?"

At the same time, Sutherland says Jack isn't as pleased by what he does as some of his fans are. "One of the things to remember about the character is that Jack wears the burden of those things, whether it's killing or torture. There's a little piece of him that gets taken away every time. This is not how he likes to conduct his business."

It's also not how Sutherland likes to see Jack conduct himself. "You have to remember this is a TV show. By no way, shape or form am I saying we should abandon due process and civil liberties. These are the great qualities of this country that make the United States the special country it is."

The clever way the series manages to walk the slippery political tightrope is one of the things that makes 24 the special show it is.

24’s Kiefer ready for more abuse
By Bill Brioux
Calgary Sun Media
July 27, 2006

PASADENA, Calif. — When we last saw Jack Bauer, the 24 action hero was being beaten to a pulp and hauled off to a Chinese torture cell.

Bauer, or rather actor Kiefer Sutherland, looked tanned, relaxed and — very unlike Jack — happy at Fox’s press tour party, an All-Star affair that Hugh Laurie (House), David Boreanaz (Bones), Courtenay Cox Arquette and David Arquette (the upcoming FX series Dirt, about dishy papers), David Foster (the upcoming reality show Duets), Brad Garrett (’Til Death) and JR himself, Larry Hagman (guesting next season on Nip/Tuck) all attended.

Sutherland, who stood with his requisite pack of Camel cigarettes in his pocket, figures 24 will pick up about a year-and-a-half from when we last saw Bauer.

“We just got the first scripts,” he told a scrum of reporters.

He was typically sketchy on other details, but admitted things look pretty grim for Jack.

“He’s at the end of his line. Something’s going to have to really rejuvenate him from the position that he’s in,” said Sutherland, “otherwise he’s just going to be dead.”

He added that it will be interesting this coming season, which starts again in January, “to come from a really deep dark place and actually try to come up instead of starting from an up position and trying to go down.”

Asked if Kim Raver, who played Jack’s lost love Audrey Raines, is through with 24 (she’s joined the cast of ABC’s The Nine), Sutherland said don’t count her out yet.

“She’s contractually free to do both shows,” he said. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

Some reporters were surprised Sutherland was at the press tour at all. His show is going into a sixth season and he’s made his millions from syndication and DVD sales. This is usually the point where a big-shot like Sutherland bails, at least until that farewell season is announced.

Still, the Emmy-nominated actor feels a certain loyalty to TV critics.

“We wouldn’t have been picked up if it wasn’t for this group five years ago,” he said.

“We were on the fence and teetering off it in the wrong direction.” He added that 24 “has been the most amazing experience of my career to date.”

Kiefer Sutherland Talks 24 - Season six and the 24 movie
By: Nuts McDougal - News Editor
iFMagazine.com News - Exclusive TV News
July 26, 2006

LOCATION: Somewhere in China?

THE SKINNY: At Fox’s press tour last night touting their new fall shows, iF caught up with Kiefer Sutherland who gave us some nice tidbits on what to expect from the sixth season of 24 which debuts in January.

Instead of picking up the next day, the show will pick up a year and a half after the events of Season 5.

While Bauer was being whisked off by the Chinese for crimes he committed in Season 4, Sutherland won’t spoil whether or not the series will be set in China this year.

"I don’t want to ruin any of that," he says. "There certainly will be stuff when I’m in Chinese custody. There will certainly be things for the DVD. Whether they make them in for the season, we’ll have to see."

Even with an additional bit of prodding, Sutherland still was tight with the details on the new season, but from the following quote, it seems pretty clear that Bauer will be back in Los Angeles at the beginning of the season.

"We always seem to run into great problems when we shoot on a plane, even if it’s an hour program," says Sutherland. "Whether there’s two storylines, whether one’s operating from China or not. I don’t want to blow that. If I was to be in China, I would stay there for the day."

The ironic part is that in real time, the Jack Bauer character should be close to 60 since every season, there’s usually a one to two year jump in between. Sutherland laughs though and notes, "I’m probably now my age [on the show]. I think I started out a little younger."

Of course the staff have already discussed in depth where we would like to see new season of 24 head, and just from the cliffhanger last season, it wouldn’t be a surprise us if Jack Bauer is programmed ala the MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by the Chinese to be the bad guy for the new season.

Sutherland didn’t flinch, when asked this, but he admits you can’t rule anything out with 24.

"One of the fantastic things about our writers, is the options are always open for everything," says Sutherland. "In certain areas and I think one of the discussions about 24 that I think has been interesting is that people have a serious moral dilemma with some of the things that Jack Bauer has done. So that rides a very thin line already. So we’ll see."

As for returning characters, Sutherland does reveal that both Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart, who played the President and First lady respectively, will likely return some time during the season.

"I think they are both going to be, [but] in which capacity and how much [is to be determined]," says Sutherland.

Meanwhile, there’s already been talk that a 24 movie will be shot next summer on the show’s hiatus and Sutherland gave hints as to what the format might be.

"It’s something we really really want to make," he adds, noting that the movie would be a standalone event that wouldn’t tie in with existing storylines happening on the TV show. "The real key difference would be, the 24 film, would be a two hour representation of a 24 hour day. It would be the first thing we didn’t do in real time. Mainly, we’re making two episodes every three weeks. We would have three months to make a two-hour movie – just to have that kind of time to really allow our cinematographer and director and writers would be great. To actually be able to do a film that has a conclusion would be exciting not only for us to make, but I think for an audience as well. The thing I’m most excited about is we’re going to make it within the context of still running the show. I believe, the film and the show can co-exist and for quite some time and once that starts to happen, the dynamic for film and television will really change in a major way."

Voice Appearances Next Season on THE SIMPSONS
The Simpsons - Sundays (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX
Source: FOX

In "GI (Annoyed Grunt)," Sunday, Nov. 12, after Bart gets out of a commitment to join the Army at 18, Homer falls prey to a couple of Army recruiters and lands himself in basic training. Homer, of course, treats this like summer camp and infuriates his hard-nosed colonel (Sutherland) when he is unfazed by the constant hazing and humiliation.

Kiefer Sutherland, Natalie Portman and The White Stripes are the latest stars to have cameos in 'The Simpsons'
PR Inside
July 25, 2006

'The Wedding Singer' actor Jon Lovitz and former Monty Python star Eric Idle will also lend their voices to characters in the 18th season of the hit animated show which will air in the US from September 10.

US rockers The White Stripes, fronted by Jack White, will play themselves in an episode where Bart organizes a benefit concert to raise funds for himself after he is mauled by a tiger his sister Lisa rescued from an animal shelter.

'24' actor Sutherland will play a hard-nosed colonel who puts Homer through his paces when he ends up in basic military training.

Meanwhile, bosses want British comedian Ricky Gervais to star in a second episode of the show after his first appearance was such a huge success.

The 44-year-old comic star - who is a huge fan of the programme - impressed the producers when an episode he wrote drew the biggest ratings of the year.

24 star leads latest charge for Web safety
By Anne Reeks - for The Chronicle.com
July 24, 2006

Internet safety campaigns come, and they go.

Some are straightforward and advice-packed, if rather gray with text. Others are flashier and more alarmist about predators and privacy-invaders lying in wait online.

However dull or high-decibel, they're well-intentioned answers to a world where Internet activities are second nature to kids and caution isn't. Trouble is, parents who make the effort to find and use such resources probably aren't the ones who need them most.

But the latest initiative seems stands a good chance of reaching those who are stuck at the do-nothing or hand-wringing stage and maybe goosing them into action.

Actor Kiefer Sutherland, terrorism-fighter Jack Bauer on the TV series 24, is the headliner for Internet Safe and Smart, a joint undertaking by Fox Interactive Media, owner of the teen-magnet MySpace.com; Common Sense Media, an independent, nonprofit group that reviews and rates books, TV shows, movies, video games and Web sites at CommonSense.com; and our old friend the PTA.

In a 20-second public service announcement, Sutherland speaks directly to parents with the kind of authority that makes presidents listen or live to regret it.

"On TV, Jack Bauer has 24 hours to make the world safe. In real life it only takes a few minutes to do the same for our kids," he says, over a Twilight Zone-ish soundtrack. "To protect them you don't need the latest state-of-the-art technology. You just need a few simple tips. Don't let them run into trouble on the Internet. Use common sense."

Then the site's shown, www.commonsense.com, where parents can download an Internet safety guidebook and tipsheets in eyesight-saving large, bold print. Chief among the recommendations for parents: Be aware of and involved in children's online activities. Don't stick your head in the sand.

Sutherland is an inspired choice for the role of attention-getter and gentle scold. His Bauer character spends a good bit of his tireless days extricating daughter Kim from jams. Nobody knows better than Bauer what kind of trouble teenagers can get into when parents' backs are turned.

Fox may have selfish reasons for urging parental intervention. The mother of a Travis County teenager who says she was sexually assaulted by another MySpace user recently sued the social-networking site and parent company News Corp., alleging negligence in protecting underage users.

But Fox also has a broad range of popular television and Internet properties on which to run the Sutherland PSA and catch eyes that might miss the message otherwise.

The Common Sense Web site and downloadable materials — the guts of the campaign — are models of user-friendliness. The site devotes big blue boxes to the five things kids do online (communicating, social networking, Web surfing, downloading, gaming) and explains each, where it poses risks and how parents can minimize them. The information is up-to-the-minute, but the language is plain English.

Both the site and the guidebook employ instantly understandable, colored "on," "pause" and "off" buttons to signify activities that are positive, deserve second thoughts or are negative. No excuses for not understanding green, yellow and red.

Kiefer Sutherland joins Dragonlance
AWN Headline News
July 18, 2006

Kiefer Sutherland will lend his voice to the character of Raistlin Majere in the animated feature, DRAGONLANCE. Sutherland joins a voice cast that includes Lucy Lawless (XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS) as Goldmoon, Michael Rosenbaum (SMALLVILLE) as Tanis Half-Elven and Michelle Trachtenberg (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) as Tika Waylan.

Based on the book DRAGONS OF AUTUMN TWILIGHT in the DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES trilogy, lifelong friends have united again, though each holds secrets about strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. However, a chance encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman, who bears a magical crystal staff, draws the companions deeper into the shadows, forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.

Will Meugniot (THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS) is directing the film, which was written by George Strayton (XENA, HERCULES). Conceptual artwork is being done by Kunoichi.

The film is being produced by Epic Level Ent., Toonz Animation and Commotion Pictures, under license from Wizards of the Coast. Authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have been heavily involved in all creative aspects of the film, which is slated for release from Paramount Pictures for fall 2007.

Regina King and D.B. Woodside Join 24
By Scott Ferguson
The Deadbolt
July 17, 2006

The cast of one of the most popular and Emmy-nominated shows on television, 24, has just gotten a little bigger with FOX announcing that two new actors have joined the show as regular cast members - Regina King and D. B. Woodside. As FOX announced in their press release, "After last season’s shocking assassination of beloved President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), the Palmer Family now comes together with the addition of King as Palmer’s sister "Angela," a powerful advocacy lawyer, and the return of Palmer’s strong-minded brother "Wayne" (Woodside) as the recently elected President."

Earlier this month, 24 was nominated for the most Emmy awards, a stunning twelve, including nods for lead actor, Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer and supporting stars, Gregory Itzin and Jean Smart. The show, coming off its fifth season, keeps gaining in steam as the bad days for Jack Bauer continue to pile up and Regina King and D. B. Woodside will come aboard for the sixth rough day of 24. 24, created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, is a production of Real Time Productions and Imagine Television in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Brian Grazer, Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran, Howard Gordon, Evan Katz, Jon Cassar and Kiefer Sutherland are the executive producers.

Regina King is best known as the wife of Cuba Gooding's character in Jerry Maguire, but she has an illustrious film career outside of that great role. The 35 year-old actress has been a major part of the TV and film scene as far back as 227 in the '80s. Regina King went on to steal scenes in a trio of John Singleton movies - Boyz N the Hood, Poetic Justice and Higher Learning - before landing the Jerry Maguire role. After that great performance, Regina King went on to roles in Enemy of the State, Mighty Joe Young, Daddy Day Care, Ray, and will play a voice role in next week's The Ant Bully.

D. B. Woodside has been a major player on 24 for years as Wayne Palmer, the now-dead President Palmer's brother. But even before 24, television fans were very familiar with D. B. Woodside, most notably for his major role at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Principal Robin Wood. D. B. Woodside has appeared on numerous other programs including The Practice, The Division, Once and Again, CSI, and JAG.

[Additional Sources: FOX, IMDB]

USATODAY.com - Peter MacNicol to become '24' regular
July 10, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter MacNicol is giving new meaning to the word "multitask." MacNicol, one of the stars of CBS' Numb3rs, is joining the cast of Fox's real-time drama, 24, as a series regular, the network announced Monday.

The 52-year-old actor will portray a high-ranking government official in the sixth season of 24, beginning in January. MacNicol won an Emmy Award in 2001 for his role as eccentric lawyer John Cage on Fox's Ally McBeal.

MacNicol plays physicist Dr. Larry Fleinhardt on Numb3rs, which also stars Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz.

24, which stars Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, tracks a federal agent's anti-terrorism exploits hour by hour, episode by episode.

The series has been nominated for a leading 12 Emmys, including outstanding drama series and outstanding lead actor in a drama series for Sutherland.

The Emmys are scheduled to air Aug. 27 on NBC, with Conan O'Brien as host of the ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

What a difference a day makes
The Observer | Review - observer.guardian.co.uk
July 2, 2006

He's the star of the acclaimed 24 and tonight he'll save America one more time as the latest series reaches its climax. But life hasn't always smiled on Kiefer Sutherland. After Brat Pack superstardom his career nosedived, then Julia Roberts ditched him. So he sought solace in rodeo riding and drink before finally finding redemption, he tells Stephanie Merritt.

Tonight, maverick counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer will save the world (or at least the part of it that matters most, the greater Los Angeles area) from Armageddon for the fifth time. Not that I want to give away the ending, but the fact that Fox has commissioned a sixth season of 24 and optioned a seventh and eighth and a possible feature film is a clue that Bauer will probably escape the clutches of his multitude of enemies on both sides of the law and live to battle several ever more improbably Byzantine plots to derail the West. Bauer is a hero for our time, arguably the greatest action hero of modern screen drama; notwithstanding the fact that he apparently never needs to eat or sleep, he is riddled with human flaws in a way that Bond or Jack Ryan never were, dramatised most explicitly in his fraught relationship with his teenage daughter, Kim, and his confrontational attitude to authority.

More boyish than his on-screen alter-ego, unobtrusively sipping pineapple juice in the corner of a quiet London hotel bar, Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland (yes, really) waves aside the suggestion that the ante has been upped so far that the storylines can only become more and more unfeasible. 'We didn't think it could be sustained after two years, so the writers have done a fantastic job,' he says, with understandable loyalty. At 39, he has spent 15 hours a day, six days a week, for the last five years on the set of 24, where he is also an executive producer. The show has not only earned him a Screen Actors' Guild award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination for every season, but revived a stalled acting career and has made him one of the most recognisable faces on American television.

24 revolutionised television drama with its ambitious real-time format, but you can't help feeling that the timing, more than anything, though not anticipated, has been crucial to its success. The first series was broadcast in the US in November 2001; the notion of global terror plots to topple the US by slaughtering thousands of civilians was no longer a pleasantly thrilling B-movie fantasy but a reality. It made us all feel a bit better to think that there might be men like Bauer - flawed, yes, but committed and possessed of a strong moral compass - keeping tabs on the terrorists rather than the seemingly clueless troupe of improvisers actually in Washington.

Since then, 24 has capitalised on its timeliness by skirting ever closer to political reality, even while its plotlines veered towards melodrama. We have had Middle Eastern terror networks, Russian separatists, biological and nuclear weapon threats and Machiavellian conspiracies and cover-ups in the corridors of power. Has the show consciously become a forum for a political message? 'Well, take a look at where the President's been going with this one,' says Sutherland.

In season five, corrupt President Logan begins by engineering a war in the Middle East to secure oil revenues (imagine!) and ends up in bed with terrorists aiming nuclear missiles at California. Liberal fans are less delighted by the question of Bauer's cavalier attitude to the Geneva Conventions; his interrogations are closer to the MO of Guantanamo or extraordinary rendition than would seem proper for the good guy.

'There are aspects of 24 where I love its politics and aspects where I hate them,' says Sutherland, though he doesn't usually exercise his executive control over the storylines. 'My input is that if it's going in a direction I really don't like, then I will say something and we'll work together, but the writers and production staff are upstairs and we don't usually interact.'

He describes his politics as 'liberal, with common sense'; his mother, actress Shirley Douglas, was the daughter of Tommy Douglas, leader of Canada's New Democratic party, 'the first socialist to come to power in North America', as Sutherland proudly describes him.

His father is iconic actor Donald Sutherland, who separated from Douglas when Kiefer and his twin sister, Rachel, were four and Donald was having an affair with Jane Fonda. Their mother disappeared for six months, leaving the children in Los Angeles with their father, then returned and took them back to Canada, where Kiefer attended seven different schools in 10 years, ending up at Toronto's exclusive St Andrew's College, from which he dropped out at 15 to pursue acting. Was he never intimidated by his father's fame?

'I got really lucky in that my dad stopped working just as I started. He took a few years off, not on purpose, but he has three sons with his wife of 30 years and he wanted to be involved with them. As much as I missed him being around when I was growing up, I think he missed us too and he wasn't going to let that happen again. So it wasn't until much later that people started making comparisons. When I started, with films like The Bay Boy and Stand by Me, I look back on those interviews and I'm amazed; there's no mention of my father, it's not even "son of Donald Sutherland". I caught a bit of a break in that it never felt like a weight to me. It's amazing that I was stupid enough to try it - we're talking about one of the most prolific actors in film history - but my parents were very gracious about making me feel like I at least had a shot at making my own path.'

The Bay Boy was an early film role, at 16, which saw him nominated for Canada's equivalent of an Oscar; by 21, he was in Hollywood, having appeared in a Spielberg television series and starred in three seminal Brat Pack movies: Stand by Me, The Lost Boys and Young Guns. He had married actress Camelia Kath and had a daughter, Sarah Jude, now 18. Does he feel, looking back, that he had a pretty easy ride to his early success?

'If the acting thing hadn't worked out for me, I'd be laying phone cable in northern Ontario.'

That's not really true, though, is it? Donald Sutherland's son laying cable? He grins and shrugs.

'Well, that was a summer job I had. But I'd left school early. I had a year to get this acting thing going; it's not that it's been an easy life but fuck ... I've been lucky, yeah, and I am aware of that. I've had opportunities that 0.0002 per cent of the people in the world have, so do something with them, don't be an idiot.'

His first marriage lasted only a couple of years, reportedly because of his predilection for drink and women, and, in 1990, while making Flatliners, Sutherland fell in love with his co-star, Julia Roberts. Their engagement made them the tabloids' First Couple of Hollywood, the Brad and Angelina of their day, which made the headlines all the more gleeful when, just days before their wedding, Roberts called it off and ran away to Europe with Sutherland's then best friend and Lost Boys co-star, Jason Patric.

He recently said of the experience: 'I commend Julia for seeing how young and silly we were, even at the last minute, even as painful and difficult as it was. Thank God she saw it.'

Perhaps he can afford to be gracious after 15 years, but I am more surprised by his forgiving attitude towards the tabloids, which have paraded every blip in his private life since then, including his four-year second marriage to model Kelly Winn, and his tendency towards wild nights, bar fights and the odd arrest for driving under the influence.

'You can't ask the press to service you with everything that they have and not expect some of the other stuff in return if you're going to live your life like I have,' he says. 'I've done enough stupid things that I might as well walk up to them and say, "Here, if I were you, I'd write it like this ..." In all fairness, the press has been pretty nice to me; even in having a go at me, it's done with a kind of humour. Only once or twice have I seen something that made me think, wow, that person really doesn't like me - where it's been malicious as opposed to "what an idiot".'

After the humiliation of the Roberts debacle, Sutherland's career seemed to take its cue from his romantic life. He was taking on negligible and sometimes downright risible roles to pay the bills until he decided to take some time off from the profession altogether and left Hollywood for a Californian cattle ranch. Here, he took up professional steer roping and, although he broke three fingers at his first rodeo, he persevered until he became a tournament-winning rider on the rodeo circuit and was finally accepted by the other cowboys as more than just a dilettante.

'For the first year I was there,' he said, 'they made fun of me. I think that they ended up accepting me more for the fact that I took that for a year than that I turned around and could actually rope.'

Though he returned to Hollywood in 1996, it was not until 2000, when he received a call from British director Stephen Hopkins asking if he would be interested in the pilot for an experimental real-time television drama, that his luck finally returned.

In the course of talking about his father, he observes that the mark of the true artist is never being willing to compromise the purity of what you do or the choices you make. I ask if he has regrets about his own choices.

'No, I don't, but ... [he pauses and considers] you know that moment when you go, "Why is this happening?", you have to look back and realise you set it in motion ...' He stops again and takes a different tack. 'I've been keenly aware of the choices that I made. I got married at 19 and there are a lot of things I did in my career, some successful, some not so.' He sits forward, suddenly animated. 'You know, Gauguin is one of my favourite painters, not because I think he was a great painter but because he was a great artist, his passion and belief in what he was doing; he gave up everything to follow his passion. I have so much respect for that because I don't have that kind of courage.'

Sutherland's commitment to his work on 24 has meant that, like Bauer, he doesn't get time for any kind of meaningful or lasting relationship. Instead, he has turned to his other great passion, music, and set up an independent record label, Ironworks, with his producer friend, Jude Cole. The first group they have signed without partnership with a major label is fronted by a 28-year-old LA blues-rock guitarist and songwriter, Rocco Deluca, whose first album, I Trust You to Kill Me, was released here in the spring.

To promote it, Sutherland accompanied the band on a five-date tour of tiny European venues, a trip that was the subject of a recent documentary of the same name. Rather than an account of a young band's struggle to get ahead, the film turned out to be an intimate portrait of Sutherland's inner landscape.

'It was almost like saying goodbye to a time in my life,' he says. 'I've been alone for a long period now and everything was about work, and then, when I wasn't working, I would just go off and pop, you know.' He nods meaningfully; this is a euphemism for the nights of drinking that have kept the tabloids busy, including the recent incident, captured in the documentary, when he rugby-tackled a seven-foot Christmas tree in a London hotel during a post-gig party.

'I think there must have been a part of me that knew it was time to change my life. One of the nice things about the tour was that it was a kind of a ... not exactly a last hurrah, but I knew stuff was going to be different after I got back.'

For someone notoriously guarded in interviews, it seems curious that he would choose to allow such an intimate film, one that frequently shows him drunk and emotionally confessional, to be made. What were his motives?

'It made me very uncomfortable, but I could see that I was saying goodbye to a part of myself that had to change, so it ended up becoming a much heavier experience than I anticipated. I thought I was just going to go for a laugh.' He grins. 'I've never apologised for who I am. I've done some things that I've had to apologise to my family for, but we are who we are and people have been really cool with me; on some level, it's better coming from me than from someone else. I showed it to my daughter and she loved it, though I don't know how my parents will react.'

So Bauer will be around for a little while longer. The projected movie version of 24, if it happens, will be filmed after the sixth series, 'but that won't be in real time,' he adds reassuringly, and explains that season six will take a slightly different turn. 'We've had five years of him saving a large thing; this one's much more about him saving his own ass. He'll go from being the one who hunts people down to the one who's being hunted, so that in itself turns the show around.'

Meanwhile, Sutherland has been giving some thought to other avenues he'd like to pursue creatively. 'I have a very strong political outlook and that is something I'd like to take more responsibility for in my life. I don't believe in utilising certain aspects of the power I have with celebrity to push that forward, but I would like to make some films that address some of those political issues. The first film I ever directed [Last Light] dealt with the death penalty - I'm a staunch opponent - and it was a tiny, million-dollar film, but it was one of those great moments in my life that felt like you are taking advantage of an opportunity and doing something good with it; I did feel good about that.'

Does he think there's more of an audience now for politically charged movies?

'I think the audience has always been there; I just don't think the material was. I really salute someone like George Clooney - there's a perfect example of someone who's really making something work. You don't have to agree with his opinion, but I love the fact that he's decided to take his opinion and make films with it, as opposed to making meaningless films and then just talking the talk. He's doing it with his work and, if I was ever going to be political on some level, that would be my avenue to do it.'

Is this something he has plans for?

'Oh yes,' he says, deadpan, and then, self-mocking, adds: 'I just haven't quite worked out how to do it yet.' Not to worry. Like Bauer, he seems to have a knack for getting around obstacles.

Life story:

1966 Born 21 December, in London, to parents Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas. His family moved to Los Angeles soon afterwards.

1970 Parents divorced. Kiefer and his mother later moved to Toronto. 1983 Returned to the US to launch his acting career in New York. His first major role came in 1984 in the Canadian rites-of-passage tale, The Bay Boy.

1987 Appeared in vampire movie, The Lost Boys, with other Brat Packers. 1987-90 Married to Camelia Kath with whom he has a daughter, Sarah Jude.

1991 Was engaged to Julia Roberts; the relationship ended days before their planned marriage.

1992 Appeared in A Few Good Men.

2001 Starred in the first series of 24 as Jack Bauer.

2006 Became the highest-paid actor for a drama series when he signed a $40m contract with Fox to play Jack Bauer for another three seasons.

24 things you didn't know about 24:

1. Jack Bauer has killed 112 people over the five years of the show. Season 4, during which he dispatched 44 'hostiles', was his best ever; in the first season he managed a lacklustre 10.

2. Kiefer Sutherland heard that American college students use 24 as a drinking game, downing a shot every time Jack Bauer says 'damn it'. So he changed the script in one episode to have Jack say 'damn it' 14 times in one hour.

3. Another frat-house game is to monitor Jack's flouting of the Geneva Conventions. In season 2 he shot a key suspect under interrogation in the heart before beheading him. In season 3, he executed a colleague on the president's orders.

4. Jack's entry codes for CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) are 4393 and Q22Q17

5. For season 2, a prototype script was written in which each (non real-time) episode would span 24 hours, but execs decided to stick to the original format.

6. During season 4 an incoming call number was shown on a character's mobile phone. More than 50,000 fans dialled the number - only to find it was real and belonged to one of the crew.

7. More than 20 lead characters have died in seasons 1-5.

8. Jack Bauer has actually died twice. In season 2 he was tortured, burned and tazered to death before miraculously coming round. In season 4 he was shot dead; then Tony Almeida injected him with epinephrine and he recovered.

9. Executive Producer Evan Katz once said: 'We make a lot of it up as we go along.'

10. 24 was the first TV show to embrace real-time - the clock keeps ticking during ad breaks and there are no flashbacks.

11. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. Three minutes are in fact gradually added to the timer during the ad breaks.

12. Almost all scenes are shot at head height.

13. We've never seen Jack eating, sleeping or going to the toilet. As a joke for season 5 he was filmed exiting the bathroom, eating a sandwich and wearing his pyjamas. It didn't make the final cut. 14 What might have been: 'The original iteration of 24 was that we were going to do 24 hours in the life of a wedding ... kind of a romantic comedy series.' (Creator Joel Surnow)

15. In the US, the Fox network had to screen adverts during season 4 episodes showing 'positive' images of Muslims, to counter charges of Islamophobia.

16. Everyone on the programme has to sign pledges not to reveal the plot.

17. Former presidential candidate and Republican Senator John McCain is such a fan of 24 he landed himself a walk-on part.

18. Blooper alert! The Californian presidential primary - the backdrop to season 1 - is held in March, not June.

19. The premiere was due to air in the US just one month after 9/11. Following the attacks, a shot of a 747 exploding was removed and the screening was delayed.

20. Jack's daughter, Kim, has been held captive in one form or other eight times.

21. Sarah Clarke was cast as Nina Myers on the morning filming was due to begin for the pilot episode.

22. Glenn Morshower, Kiefer Sutherland, Carlos Bernard and Dennis Haysbert are the only actors to appear in all five seasons.

23. To speak fluent Jack, use the following phrases often: 'Where's Kim?', 'Who are you working for?', 'Get down on the ground!' and, of course, 'Damn it!'

24. Fox commissioned two more series of 24 in May. A feature film will begin production next year, with parts to be shot in London.

Benji Wilson

24 heaven
Daily Telegraph.co.uk | Entertainment
May 5, 2006

Kiefer Sutherland swapped acting for rodeo riding when work dried up. Now he is busier and happer than ever - but still needs to be kept on a tight rein. He talks to David Thomas.

Kiefer Sutherland is feeling the cold. He's about to spend another night on location in southern California, saving the world from imminent disaster in the guise of Jack Bauer, hero of the television series 24, the fifth series of which starts next week. 'You always forget that this place is a desert,' observes Sutherland, as he gets changed to face the cameras. 'Even if it's 70 degrees in the day, it drops down to 35 at night. You're never really prepared for it.'

Sutherland may shiver, but Bauer doesn't worry about minor details like temperature. The ultimate 21st-century super-agent, Bauer blends the heroic cool of James Bond with Dirty Harry's brutal willingness to shoot bad guys and to torture suspects for the sake of the greater good. Unsurprisingly, some liberal critics are outraged by this flagrant amorality. But not Sutherland. 'There are a thousand things Jack Bauer does that are illegal, wrong and shouldn't be allowed in a free, democratic society, or even a totalitarian society,' he says. 'But in the context of a television show - and I hope nobody out there thinks this is a documentary, yeah - we will use devices including torture to create drama. I think we live in a world that's smart enough to tell the difference between 24 and Abu Ghraib prison.'

To most viewers - and 17 million of them watched the first episode of the new series in the US - the morality of 24 is far less important than its unrelenting tension, and the possibility that this just might be the last series. While the Hollywood press has suggested that a sixth series has been commissioned, Sutherland seems less certain. 'I'm not sure about that. The Fox network [which shows 24 in the US] has always commissioned us year-to-year and that has always kept us on our toes.'

Unless there is a drastic decline between now and the end of the new series in May, however, 24 will surely return. The series has been syndicated all over the world, and DVD sets sell by the million. Sutherland, meanwhile, has been showered with awards and nominations. Last week he won the Screen Actors Guild award for best actor in a television drama. He has been nominated for an Emmy for every season of 24 so far and has picked up a Golden Globe.

Sutherland does not have conventional leading-man looks. His chin is too long, his cheeks are pouchy, his mouth is almost cupid-bowed. But somehow the parts come together to create a face that conveys toughness and repressed emotion. He is helped by the fact that 24 is that rarest of commodities: a genuinely original idea. Each series covers a single action-packed day, played out in real time over 24 hour-long episodes. Every ad break is preceded and followed by an on-screen clock, giving the time that has elapsed. As the seconds tick by, Bauer and his fellow agents in the Counter-Terrorism Unit do battle with their enemies. In the first four series, he has thwarted presidential assassins, nuclear terrorists and the threat of pandemic plague. He has not, however, shown any signs of possessing normal bodily functions. Even Bond sips the occasional Martini, but Bauer routinely goes 24 hours without eating, sleeping or going anywhere near a lavatory.

Sutherland, who is 39, gives a rueful chuckle when I mention this. Clearly, I'm not the first person to have noticed. 'As a joke, for the opening of Season Five, we shot a sequence with Jack coming out of the bathroom, with a sandwich in his hand, wearing his pyjamas. I thought that would take care of everything in one go.' The joke did not make the screen. Humour is not a feature of 24. And anyway, we can't have Jack Bauer giving in to human weaknesses.

Kiefer Sutherland, however, is not so immune to temptation. He recently turned up in London with a little-known rock band called Rocco de Luca and the Burden, which is signed to his Ironworks record label, and threw an impromptu party in a hotel lobby. It culminated with Sutherland pulling down the Christmas tree, collapsing on the floor and pleading with a female reporter: 'Don't go! I've got a crush on you.' A photographer captured the star, in all his prone, semi-conscious glory.

Mere mention of the incident causes mild panic in the PR girl monitoring our interview. But Sutherland himself doesn't seem too bothered. 'We had a couple of good nights in London, but one of them was more public, I guess. We work hard on 24 and this was my Christmas break and I was with some of my best friends. We ended up having a belated Christmas party.' As he told the chat-show host David Letterman, 'There I was, looking at this 16ft Christmas tree. I ran as fast as I could and I launched myself at it. The bass player said it looked like a cat attacking a bear.'

This is not the first time that Sutherland has looked a fool in public. In 1991, his then fiancée, Julia Roberts, left him just days before their wedding (he has been divorced twice). Before that humiliation, Sutherland was one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood, with a string of hits including Stand By Me, Young Guns and Flatliners. After it, he was a global laughing-stock. I ask, without naming names, how it feels to have one's private life paraded in the media. 'Obviously, no one wants anyone to say anything bad about them ever!' he replies. 'But the way I've lived my life has made that impossible. The first time that it happens - and obviously you're referring to the experiences I had with Julia Roberts - you get very embarrassed about going to the market to get your food. But ultimately you gotta go, because you gotta eat and you find yourself [looking at the tabloids and] saying, "Well, that's not true. And that's not true." Later on in life, you realise you'll still wake up the next day and be all right. I can't deny that half the stuff that's been written about me has been true. I've done some stupid things. You just have to take responsibility, go, "That was embarrassing," and move forward as best you can.'

Sutherland, who has since filled more gossip-column inches after being spotted out on the town with Tricia Cardozo, a New York PR executive, is not the kind of man to complain. Perhaps this is because he is not, in fact, an American but a stiff-upper-lipped Brit. Born in London in 1966, Sutherland has dual Canadian/British nationality - his father is the film star Donald Sutherland and his mother is the Canadian actress Shirley Douglas. 'I had one huge advantage over so many young actors,' he says. 'I had parents who were incredibly successful. I've watched their careers go up and go down. I've watched them be incredibly strong as activists through the Sixties and Seventies. Then I've watched them suffer over the backlash to those choices. I've also watched them never back down from those choices. They've both been fine parents who've always been there to say, "We'd both appreciate it if you didn't do that again, but it'll be all right."' Sutherland and his twin sister, Rachel, were four when their parents split and they went to live in Toronto with their mother. At the age of 12, Sutherland was sent to boarding school. 'I have friends for whom going to a school like that had a traumatic, negative effect,' he says. 'But it affected me in an incredibly positive way. I had a housemaster called Ted Harrison, a stern Glaswegian who was a father-figure to me. Ted was one of those men who would pull you aside and say [Sutherland switches into a Glasgow rasp], "I don't mind if ye have a little bit of fun, mate. But ye have tae get yer work done and yer not doing that, so that's why yer going tae be out running tomorrow morning." He was right. It was about getting the work done. That's stuck with me my whole life. Whenever I've gotten out of line, all I have to do is remember Ted Harrison.'

Sutherland is perhaps unusual among Hollywood stars in not being a flake, and for being as physically tough as the character he plays. But after his relationship with Roberts collapsed, his career stalled. He struggled to cope. 'When you're young you take it personally,' he says. 'You think that people don't like you. And you have to re-examine why you're doing this and what really matters. I took time off. I needed to know that I could be fine, even if everything fell apart. I realised I still had my life. I could still make fantastic friends. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life alone in some terrible flophouse hotel in East LA. I was going to be fine. That did a lot for my confidence and my perspective on what I'm doing.'

Sutherland's solution was to quit acting and start a new career, roping steers as a professional rodeo rider. He soon learnt the difference between acting and real life. 'The first thing that ever happened to me at a rodeo was that I broke three fingers. My hand caught between my rope and my saddle and it just snapped. We managed to catch that calf so we made the show, which means that you're allowed to compete the next day. But when I came off I said to the other cowboy on my team, "I can't do it. It's not possible." He said, "Son, that's a long way from your heart." Meaning, that's not going to kill you, and you're going to deal with it. He wasn't joking. He needed the money and he was right, it was a long way from my heart. There were a couple of guys out there who stopped me being a baby.'

Over the next two years, Sutherland became a tournament-winning rider. The fact that he was accepted in such an unforgiving world was, he says, 'huge for me on so many levels. For the first year I was there, they made fun of me mercilessly.

I think that they ended up accepting me more for the fact that I took that for a year than that I turned around and could actually rope.'

Sutherland returned to Hollywood in 1996, but it wasn't until he was cast in 24 that he began to achieve his former glory and, indeed, surpass it. It was Bauer's fallibility that appealed most, he says. 'He had incredible responsibilities as a professional, but he had a 16-year-old daughter he couldn't handle and his marriage was falling apart. I felt that made him incredibly human. And in many cases, when I was younger, I did not take my family responsibilities seriously and I lost out on a lot on a personal level.'

In another parallel between life and art, Sutherland has an 18-year-old daughter, Sarah Jude, from his first marriage. 'I've been really lucky. My daughter's incredibly understanding about how young I was and what I was doing. But make no mistake about it, as much as we have a friendship, the dynamic of our relationship is a father and a daughter: if I say you have to do something, you have to do it.'

Well, of course she does. After all, her father is Jack Bauer, federal agent. And no one says no to Jack.

Sutherland 'signs up for more 24'
BBC NEWS | Entertainment
April 10, 2006

Kiefer Sutherland will star in three more series of hit drama 24, according to Variety and Hollywood Reporter.

The actor has starred as government agent Jack Bauer for five seasons of the Fox show.

The show was considered groundbreaking when it first aired in 2001 as it was screened in "real time" with one day spread over 24 episodes.

The new deal will see Sutherland paid a reported $40m (£22.9m). He will also be an executive producer of the series.

Sutherland said his past five years on the show was "one of the most creative and rewarding experiences of my career".

Big-screen thriller:

The deal will also allow the actor to develop new projects for TV and the internet through his own production company.

Sutherland, who rose to fame in films such as the 1987 teenage vampire film The Lost Boys, also starred in the movie Flatliners with his former fiancee Julia Roberts and in legal drama A Few Good Men.

His performance in 24 won him a Golden Globe award in 2002 and he has also been nominated for four Emmys.

Sutherland's next big-screen outing will be in crime thriller The Sentinel, opposite Michael Douglas and Kim Basinger.

He is also voicing a character in Disney's latest cartoon feature, The Wild, where he plays a lion called Samson.