Donald Sutherland Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Donald Sutherland (July 17, 1935 – June 20, 2024) played Matthew Bennell in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). He was 42 when the film was shot in San Francisco in the spring of 1978, turning 43 that July.

Body Snatchers landed in the middle of Sutherland's strongest run

By 1978 Sutherland had MASH (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), and Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) behind him. He was a leading man who looked like a character actor and kept getting cast as the intelligent, slightly wrong-footed protagonist in paranoid pictures. Matthew Bennell — a public-health inspector who spends the first reel pulling rat droppings out of French kitchens — sits directly in that wheelhouse.

"We first see Matthew — elaborately mustached, curly-haired and stoop-shouldered, in fabulous schlubby-hip trench coat and expressively bugged-out eyes — as he strides into a pricey French restaurant like an unwelcome one-man underclass." — Noah Berlatsky, Everything Is Horrible (2024)

The curly hair is load-bearing. Sutherland had worn a similar head of curls in Don't Look Now, and Matthew's silhouette deliberately rhymes with that earlier paranoid widower.

Matthew's character comes through in the small exchanges

Sutherland builds Matthew out of conversational rhythms — the way he deflects, jokes, and reaches for Elizabeth without quite saying what he means. The Republican joke is the film's best-known line, and Sutherland delivers it as a throwaway:

"Geoffrey's changed. He doesn't show the same interest." / "Maybe he's a pod." / "What's a pod?" / "I don't know, maybe he's becoming a Republican." — Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), dialogue

Later, cornered by Kibner and the other pods, Matthew's defiance has the same casual register — a man who argues the way he breathes:

"We'll do whatever we can to stop you." / "What are you going to do? Go to the police?" — Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), dialogue

The pod's reply is the film's bleakest joke. The police are already pods.

Sutherland refused to get a perm and rehearsed in pink rollers

The most-retold production anecdote about Sutherland comes from Veronica Cartwright (in Body Snatchers, as actor).

"We'd be rehearsing, and he had his hair in pink rollers because he didn't want to get a perm. Then, about three weeks before we finished, he decided to get a perm." — Veronica Cartwright, Cinema Retro (2013)

Cast and crew watched Sutherland sit through every blocking session in curlers rather than commit to chemicals. He gave in weeks later anyway.

Kaufman told Sutherland about the scream the night before shooting it

The final shot of the film — Matthew, already a pod, pointing at Nancy and producing the inhuman shriek — was kept secret from almost the entire production. Philip Kaufman (in Body Snatchers, as director) waited until the last possible moment to hand it to his lead.

"The night before we shot I talked to Donald Sutherland about it. He could have rejected it and we would have been in some sort of trouble. Donald embraced it." — Philip Kaufman, It Came From Blog (2018)

Ben Burtt, fresh off Star Wars, had built the pod shriek from pig squeals mixed with layered ultrasound and animal recordings. Burtt played the sound live on the set while Sutherland performed it, which is how Cartwright's reaction — she hadn't been told — arrived on camera without any coaxing. See The Pod Scream.

"I don't remember that we even told Veronica until Donald turned and did that shriek." — Philip Kaufman, It Came From Blog (2018)

Sutherland's filmography around Body Snatchers

Year	Film	Role
1970	MASH	Hawkeye Pierce
1971	Klute	John Klute
1973	Don't Look Now	John Baxter
1975	The Day of the Locust	Homer Simpson
1976	1900	Attila Mellanchini
1978	Invasion of the Body Snatchers	Matthew Bennell
1978	Animal House	Professor Jennings
1980	Ordinary People	Calvin Jarrett
1981	Eye of the Needle	Henry Faber