After gaining Hollywood stardom with his acclaimed performance as combat surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in the 1970 black comedy war filmMAS*H,Donald Sutherlandcontinued to do his part for hisnative Canadian film industry, which he virtually carried throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, as the most prominent Canadian-born actor to achieve Hollywood leading-man status during this period. Sutherland was often loyal to Canadian cinema to a fault. Thebest of Sutherland’s Canadian filmsis the 1981 medical dramaThreshold, in which the actor gives a compelling performance as a brilliant heart surgeon performing the first artificial heart transplant on a human patient in history.
The worst of his Canadian films, and possibly his entire career, is the 1980 romantic comedyNothing Personal.In it, Sutherland plays a jaded university law professor who joins forces with an environmental lawyer, played by Suzanne Somers, to prevent the slaughter of baby seals in Alaska. Boring, disorganized, desperate, and unconvincing,Nothing Personalis the kind of film that tries to be about everything to disguise the fact that it isn’t really about anything.
Besides the campaign to save baby seals,the plot involves car chases, Indigenous rights, melodrama, political intrigue, romance, and soap opera. This is a cynical cover for the film’s primary purpose, which is to place the gorgeous Somers in various soft-core sexual situations with Sutherland, who was only a decade older than Somers but looks and seems like a father figure.
For Sutherland,Nothing Personalis a most curious entry from a period in which he gave some of the best performances of his career.Nothing Personalproves that even great actors are entirely dependent on quality material, as evidenced bySutherland’s Oscar-worthy performancein the 1980 drama filmOrdinary People, which was filmed directly afterNothing Personal.
Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers Made an Unlikely Pairing
When one thinks ofDonald Sutherland’s most memorable screen pairingswith actresses, the list includes Brooke Adams inInvasion of the Body Snatchers, Julie Christie inDon’t Look Now, Jane Fonda inKlute, Kate Nelligan inEye of the Needle, and Mary Tyler Moore inOrdinary People. Needless to say, his co-star inNothing Personal,Suzanne Somers, represents the oddest pairing in his career.
While Sutherland brought an illustrious list of film credits toNothing Personal, Somers, who previously starred alongside Ian McShane in the obscure 1979 British soccer drama filmYesterday’s Hero, was best known to audiences for playing eternally bubbly blonde Chrissy Snow on the hit ABC sitcomThree’s Company, which had ended its third season when the filming ofNothing Personalcommenced in June 1979.
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Despite this seeming mismatch, Somers radiates charm and energy inNothing Personal.In it, Somers plays Abigail Adams, a Harvard-educated environmental lawyer who teams with Sutherland’s character, law professor Roger Keller, to prevent an endangered colony of seals from being murdered to make way for the construction of a United States military base in Alaska. Of course, a romance ensues between the lawyer and the professor.
Within this unlikely combination, Somers is more watchable than Sutherland, who handles romantic scenes with Somers with awkwardness and seems generally embarrassed by the entire proceedings. His evident lack of enthusiasm inNothing Personalwas shared by Somers, who wrote in her autobiography thathe essentially took over the direction ofNothing Personalafter it became apparent that the film’s credited director, George Bloomfield, wasn’t up to the unenviable task.
Nothing Personal Marked the Beginning and End of Somers' Film Career
Suzanne Somers holds a degree of cinematic immortality from herpoignantly symbolic performanceas the elusive blonde who drives a white Thunderbird and haunts a teenage boy’s thoughts in the blockbuster 1973 coming-of-age filmAmerican Graffiti. However,Nothing Personalwas a terrible vehicle to attempt to launch a film career for Somers, whose feature film ambitions were permanently halted by the film’s commercial and critical failure.
The failure ofNothing Personalheralded a tumultuous period in Somers’ career. In the summer of 1980, just beforeThree’s Companyentered production for its fifth season, Somers, who had been receiving $30,000 per episode, demanded a salary increase to $150,000 along with a share of the show’s profits. The dispute resulted in Somers having her role reduced to that of a cameo figure before being phased out entirely throughout the fifth season, in which her character, Chrissy Snow, was replaced by Chrissy’s cousin, Cindy Snow, played by Jenilee Harrison.
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While Somers,who died in 2023at the age of 76, was undoubtedly limited as an actress, she wasn’t as limited asNothing PersonalandThree’s Companymade her seem. What she needed to transcend her dumb-blonde persona was a role that blended her sex appeal and warmth with the intelligence with which Somers launched an infomercial empire in the 1990s.
Sutherland Was Too Good for Nothing Personal
WithinDonald Sutherland’s rich career,Nothing Personalresides in utter obscurity, buried by the enduring legacy of so many of his memorable and popular films. WhileNothing Personalis hardly the only terrible film in which Sutherland starred throughout his career, in and out of Canada, the actor never appeared in another movie that so completely ignored and misunderstood his distinctive qualities as an actor.
With the various tributes that accompanied theannouncement of Sutherland’s deathat the age of 88, there followed a growing realization that he left behind many interesting and memorable films that never received the acclaim and attention they deserved while he was alive, such asEye of the NeedleandThreshold. In stark contrast, none of Sutherland’s films are more worthy of being completely forgotten thanNothing Personal.Nothing Personalis available to stream onMGM+.
