Kiefer Sutherland quotes:

I've always traveled with a picture of my daughter from 1989, her kindergarten school picture, that has 'I love you, Daddy' written on it. She's always made fun of me because I never changed that picture out. It's like my resistance to her getting older. It was the first thing she'd ever written to me and it means the world to me.

I've had some amazing people in my life. Look at my father - he came from a small fishing village of five hundred people and at six foot four with giant ears and a kind of very odd expression, thought he could be a movie star. So go figure, you know?

24' and 20th Century Fox and Sky TV are not responsible for training the U.S. military. It is not our job to do. To me, this is almost as absurd as saying, 'The Sopranos' supports the mafia, and by virtue of that, HBO supports the mafia.'

I love collecting guitars, even though I can't play well. My favourite guitarists are Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Paige, and John Mayer.

I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.

When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?

Were kind of in our own cocoon making it. Every once in a while you stick your head up for a second, and you just cant believe how successful the show has become.

Commander I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ and because I do I can say this. Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor. And God was watching.

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.

There are two things that Jack Bauer never does. Show mercy, and go to the bathroom.

There are aspects of '24' where I love its politics and aspects where I hate them.

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.

When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, 'Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, 'I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?'

Some people think it's because '24' was jump-started by what happened on 9/11. That was never why we made the show. We started production six months prior to 9/11, and we'd already done ten episodes.

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.

I think the most attractive thing is a sense of humour. If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way.

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts.

The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous.

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better.

Yes, I do believe that there is a cause and effect and a ripple effect upon everything everybody does, and they have positive consequences and negative consequences. If you start to focus on the kind of minutia of that, it's really quite extraordinary.

My parents not only did it for a living, but they were really good at it.

I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.

I couldn't see my father's films because they were restricted and we didn't have videos or DVDs back then.

I like chatting with people. If people ask me a direct question, I give them a direct answer and I feel I've always done that with the press.

Youth is an amazing thing: I think back on when we did The Lost Boys, and I didn't think I could do anything wrong.

Romania is an interesting place because I think it has been abused, on so many different levels.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

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.

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.

I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set.

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.

When I saw Virginia Woolf, somewhere between the first and second acts, someone I had known as my mother became somebody else.

One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack - he takes charge.

If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show, we've got a really big problem.

There are three things we need to do for a band. We need to make a great record; we need to get the record played; and we need to find an audience for the live shows.

I do believe very strongly that all of us and all of the other things in the context of our planet with Mother Nature, all of these things absolutely have a profound effect.

When I wasn't the flavor of the week or month or day, those were hard times.

The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly.

I consider myself to be a relatively helpful person, and there's an interesting line when hope starts to become the way you actually mask or hide from what's really happening.

I didn't grow up with my dad, so it was always very funny to me, and always has been, what an important part DNA plays in one's life.

I didn't realize that television has gone through immense changes and has become very progressive.

I had an unbelievable experience on '24'. We shot 198 episodes, and I was as excited about shooting the 198th as I was the first.

I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast.

I just always liked the company. The people who hung around her were amazing storytellers, whether it was actors or crew. They were just exciting people. And I knew that they were different when I would go see a friend or stay at someone else's house. It just wasn't as cool. So I always loved the theater, and that's where I started: at a theater up in Canada.

I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

I remember being really grateful that David Lynch had actually even thought of casting me, because I was a huge fan of his.

I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult.

I think one of the things I was most interested in finding out was how differently we approached our work. And my reality was that we didn't approach it very differently at all, which was funny.

I think the father-son dynamic is interesting. I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son.

I think when you get the opportunity to work with someone like Lars Von Trier... I mean, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, just to work with those actors, you take that opportunity when you get it.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing.

If you take a look at our natural history, there's always a moment where the young lion wants to challenge the older lion and, inherently, that's going to be problematic, and I don't think we're any different.

If you're going to break cinema, film, and movies apart, very rarely to you get the opportunity to even think that you've been a part of cinema.

I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character.

Isn't it funny? You hear a phone ring and it could be anybody. But, a ringing phone has to be answered doesn't it?

I've always been shocked that people that I'm actually flying with say, 'Oh, I feel safer on the plane with you.' I'm thinking, 'You must not watch the show because everybody around me gets killed.'

I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best.

I've done some stupid things. You just have to take responsibility, go, That was embarrassing, and move forward as best you can.

I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.

I've wanted to work with my father for 30 years, and I'm really grateful that I finally had the opportunity, and it ended up - the experience and, I believe, the film - better than I could ever have hoped for.

Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.

Most of my career I've spent really nervous. Just about work, getting work and having it in.

My focus on 9/11 was on the victims - in the towers, in the planes - and all that loss.

My mother was an extraordinary theater actor in Canada, and when I would finish school, I would go to the theater. I would do my homework, we would have dinner there, she would do her play, and then me and my sister would go home. So I grew up in it that way.

My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of.

Some days I'm in better control and can navigate my way through stuff, and other days, not so much.

The father-son thing, that's a separate thing. This film [Forsaken] was not about that. This was a film about two actors wanting to try and tell a story... and taking advantage of the fact that we looked like a father and son.

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

There are certain moments that you have to hit in a film, like when a character cries.

There are very few films that I've ever seen in my life that would be as silent or vacant as something like Jeremiah Johnson, and that to me was unbelievably captivating. You can see the same about [The Outlaw] Josey Wales: there's very little dialogue, and yet it contains such a deep, rich story. I've always thought of the western as American storytelling at its best.

Theres a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts.

Westerns just thematically, as a genre, have kind of a few tent poles that I really admire, and one of them is this perception that life was simpler back then. And with that perception goes that people were good or people were bad. You survived by your strengths or you perished by your weaknesses.

What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I dont have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

You know, I wish I wasn't so young when I made some of my movies, because I thought that's what the rest of my life was going to be like and I'd have all the time in the world to enjoy it. It wasn't and I didn't.

People respond to a guy who is trapped and succeeds on some level and fails on another.